The Cookie Fairy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alcesverdes) wrote2009-06-29 11:12 pm
alcesverdes) wrote2009-06-29 11:12 pm
My stance on the warning debate
[General 'you' all along the post]
I don't usually participate in debates on the internet mostly because I'm truly lazy. I mean, sometimes I don't even read the most relevant post/comments on the matter. This hasn't changed, really, but since I do write fanfic and I am interested in fiction writing in general, I do have an opinion on this that I'm going to write down and make public even though no-one is going to care about it --again, laziness keeps me from promoting myself and I tend to be scared of fandom (it has a lot do to with one of my first fandom experiences being some random girl contacting me and trying to get me into a ploy to kill Harry Potter's actor's girlfriend. I-I mean. It didn't feel like it was a joke, and even if it was, talking about murdering a real person is the sort of shit that's truly creepy, dude).
Anyway.
Back to the subject at hand, what I've to say is:
I actually enjoy gory and over-the-top-violent fiction --one of my favorite films while growing up was RoboCop (alongside Labyrinth, I'm weird like that)-- and at the same time I understand why some people may not like seeing guts flying all over the screen nor reading in detail about blood on a wall, so I do know that I can't go around recommending neither the Predator movie nor Clive Barker's stuff to just about anybody even though I'd love to have more people around to talk about those morbid things I like.
What I mostly try to do is go around doing is warning friends and family when, for example, 'one of those movies' I've watched is beginning on tv. "Hey, you won't like that one, it has graphic close ups of wounds/torture/mutilation/that thing you probably won't like to see." And that's good because I prefer seeing friends and family changing channels than to see them upset because I didn't tell them about the scary stuff in there.
Because, you know, this is about sharing, but mostly about caring.
You post your fanfic on the 'net from everyone to see. That's sharing.
You state somewhere before the text 'x act of violence happens here'. That's caring because you just gave the option to anyone who's triggered by x to skip that one fic. You don't have to say to whom it happens nor how it happens, only that it does and that's it.
Writing --and art in general-- is a lot about transgression and breaking molds and bounds and making people think and feel but it just can't be about inflicting unsuspected violence, specially not on those who had suffered it already.
Books, movies, art galleries have warnings. (Ever been to the Torture Museum? I have. It's shocking and sad and scary but I knew what I was getting into thanks to all the signs on the entrance when I chose to buy the ticket.) Those things do have warnings but your fanfic doesn't because you're a special snowflake that can't write.
Yes, that's right. It may be unfair, but if you say that you don't want to warn about sensitive things on your fic because it compromises your precious artistic integrity, I'm going to just assume that you don't know a thing about writing --nor about what artistic integrity really means-- because this tends to mean that the fic in question depends only on the Surprise!Shock Twist and one of the first lessons in fiction writing (fan and original) is that the 'how it happened' matters a lot more than the 'what happened'.
Building up the tension in a story is the most important part of it, even if it's only a drabble. If you can't even do that, well, there's lots and lots of other authors, pro and fan, whose stories are worth reading.
As for me, I am going to warn in the headers of my fic the best I can.
I don't usually participate in debates on the internet mostly because I'm truly lazy. I mean, sometimes I don't even read the most relevant post/comments on the matter. This hasn't changed, really, but since I do write fanfic and I am interested in fiction writing in general, I do have an opinion on this that I'm going to write down and make public even though no-one is going to care about it --again, laziness keeps me from promoting myself and I tend to be scared of fandom (it has a lot do to with one of my first fandom experiences being some random girl contacting me and trying to get me into a ploy to kill Harry Potter's actor's girlfriend. I-I mean. It didn't feel like it was a joke, and even if it was, talking about murdering a real person is the sort of shit that's truly creepy, dude).
Anyway.
Back to the subject at hand, what I've to say is:
I actually enjoy gory and over-the-top-violent fiction --one of my favorite films while growing up was RoboCop (alongside Labyrinth, I'm weird like that)-- and at the same time I understand why some people may not like seeing guts flying all over the screen nor reading in detail about blood on a wall, so I do know that I can't go around recommending neither the Predator movie nor Clive Barker's stuff to just about anybody even though I'd love to have more people around to talk about those morbid things I like.
What I mostly try to do is go around doing is warning friends and family when, for example, 'one of those movies' I've watched is beginning on tv. "Hey, you won't like that one, it has graphic close ups of wounds/torture/mutilation/that thing you probably won't like to see." And that's good because I prefer seeing friends and family changing channels than to see them upset because I didn't tell them about the scary stuff in there.
Because, you know, this is about sharing, but mostly about caring.
You post your fanfic on the 'net from everyone to see. That's sharing.
You state somewhere before the text 'x act of violence happens here'. That's caring because you just gave the option to anyone who's triggered by x to skip that one fic. You don't have to say to whom it happens nor how it happens, only that it does and that's it.
Writing --and art in general-- is a lot about transgression and breaking molds and bounds and making people think and feel but it just can't be about inflicting unsuspected violence, specially not on those who had suffered it already.
Books, movies, art galleries have warnings. (Ever been to the Torture Museum? I have. It's shocking and sad and scary but I knew what I was getting into thanks to all the signs on the entrance when I chose to buy the ticket.) Those things do have warnings but your fanfic doesn't because you're a special snowflake that can't write.
Yes, that's right. It may be unfair, but if you say that you don't want to warn about sensitive things on your fic because it compromises your precious artistic integrity, I'm going to just assume that you don't know a thing about writing --nor about what artistic integrity really means-- because this tends to mean that the fic in question depends only on the Surprise!Shock Twist and one of the first lessons in fiction writing (fan and original) is that the 'how it happened' matters a lot more than the 'what happened'.
Building up the tension in a story is the most important part of it, even if it's only a drabble. If you can't even do that, well, there's lots and lots of other authors, pro and fan, whose stories are worth reading.
As for me, I am going to warn in the headers of my fic the best I can.
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AND WORD.
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