(no subject)

[drusillas_rain]

I really wish RL books came with warnings. I'm really getting tired of unexpected rape scenes within the first 10 pages of a book :(

Comments

[innerslytherin]

depending on the medium

Oh, that's for sure! I've sweated over this a lot when trying to figure out how to rate fics, and I know I haven't managed to be consistent when it comes to where I draw the line between PG-13 and R, and where I draw the line between R and NC-17. It's difficult. And of course there's also the way people talk about men being more visually inclined than women, and I suspect that also plays into how ratings are established. *cough*

I will definitely say that being part of fandom and learning the conventions of fic warnings, and the reasons for those conventions, has definitely educated me in a lot of ways. Of course, one of the other things fandom has educated me about is the vast edges of the realm of sexuality, both consensual and non-consensual (if you would even call that sexuality as opposed to...well, I don't know a better term, but there must be one). Until the Harry Potter fandom, I always thought golden showers would be, like, sunshine and blessings. :D

But in all seriousness, not at ALL brainier than I wanted. This is an interesting discussion, and for all that my default approach was from the other direction than Dru's, I also find a LOT of merit in the idea of warnings. I confess that I often dislike having to warn for things that I think will "spoil" the plot for people, but I also hate the idea of springing something on people who aren't prepared for it, so I think (I hope) I tend to err on the side of spoiling rather than surprising.

In any event, this is a very interesting discussion.

[mad_maudlin]

There is ZERO consistency in how lines are drawn. The 1999 South Park movie was, on some level, a meta-commentary on just how vile a movie had to be to get an NC-17 rating without including any graphic sex. You're probably doing better than the MPAA. :-)

I think HTML is a gift for spoilery warnings--lets you set some parts of your header to black-on-black or white-on-white so that it's up to the readers--which goes back to the caveat-lector philosophy, that you're taking responsibility for reading something without looking at the header first.