James said:
Infact, I just PMed Laura about F&I with my soon to be normal question I will start asking the authors from now on. If I can't have a warning, I will just have to be cautious and ask before reading.
Patrick said:
So I'll just be more careful, wait for the first FDK thread and check it out PRIOR to reading a new story.
I think these are both very sensible ideas. Personally, I would probably elect to include a general caution or summary if I thought I was posting something significantly out of the mainstream or something that touched on one of the hot-button issues in this forum, but I am very unlikely to include a detailed "warning" about every single thing that someone might find offensive in my story. Even if I were inclined to do that, which I'm not, as several here have pointed out, we all have different ideas of what's offensive anyway, and I'm sure I'd miss something. As long as my story is properly rated and conforms to the requirements of the board, I think the burden must be shifted to the readers to take responsibility for their own reading material.
Patrick's decision to use the FDK threads as a guide is something I've been doing for as long as I've been reading fan fiction. I haven't read Laura's story because, while I enjoy her writing very much, I have zero interest in reading about vampires and kind of a narrow definition of what sorts of AU scenarios work for me. I knew it was a vampire story from the posting of the first comment, so I gave it a miss.
And while as an author I won't post a detailed warning, I would be very happy to respond to a PM from someone who wanted to know if certain elements were likely to appear in the story. And I do usually know with a fair degree of accuracy what even a long story is likely to contain, so please feel free to ask away. But I simply can't know which of those included elements is likely to offend which readers. Just trying to remember which of my kids likes mayonnaise and which doesn’t is kind of taxing to this poor old tired brain these days.
Of course, a final option is to wait and read the story once it's been archived, assuming it is. The content will be set in stone, as it were, and the summary will provide at least a hint as to what the story is about. If anything there raises concern, an e-mail could be sent to the author. I have no desire to foist my writing on someone who doesn't want to read it or might be made uncomfortable by it, and I doubt any of the other authors here do either. The reluctance to post detailed warnings stems from a disinclination to spoil the story for the people who
do want to read it - not because I want to "trick" someone into reading it who is likely to find it offensive.
As a reader, I've always assumed that the burden was on me to manage my own reading. And yes, there are certain themes that are just absolute deal-breakers for me, and there have been times I've been frustrated by getting deep into a story and then having one of those deal-breakers rear its ugly head. But ultimately, I come down on the side of the authors' right not to spoil their stories with tons of warnings. Unless and until the moderators of this board start requiring detailed warnings to be appended to each and every story, readers who have specific content concerns might just have to take extra steps to make sure they avoid that content. Fortunately, there are several ways already in place to do that.
Best,
Caroline
