In the 'Would Alt-Clark kill himself' thread, the conversation strayed a little off-topic, as it frequently does,
to the subject of warnings for WHAMmy stories. We have some authors who are reluctant to post what they feel are spoilers for their stories, believing that these reduce the dramatic impact, although they are willing to do it for the sake of those readers who are unhappy with the idea of encountering serious WHAMs without a warning. There are readers who prefer not to read, or are wary of, stories with serious WHAMs, and appreciate being given a warning so that they can choose whether to read the story or not, or wait until it's complete. And then there are readers who are happy to take what comes and hate being spoiled in any way.
How can these different views be accommodated? Thus far, the practice - out of courtesy - has been for authors to include a WHAM warning, and sometimes a 'fixing the toys' promise, at the start of their story. But this, while seen as a much-appreciated courtesy by some, is a clear spoiler to others.
(I should add that, while this practice is far from mandatory - though I suspect some readers wish it were
- it is customary on the Archive for deathfics - stories where either Lois or Clark dies - to be labelled as such).
Once, Tank used a separate thread for his WHAM warning, simply telling readers that it was there and they could read or not read as they wished. That was less of a spoiler for those readers who didn't want to be spoiled, though the mere existence of that thread told them that there was
something WHAMmy in the story.
So here's a different idea. You may be aware that there is already a Tank Warning thread stickied to the top of the fanfic folder. What if we created a WHAM warning thread in both Fanfic and nFanfic, and authors posting stories with WHAMs could post their WHAM warning in there - or ask someone else to post it for them, so that their name appearing in that thread didn't offer a spoiler for any reader who didn't want to be spoiled. I'm sure a means could be worked out, too, whereby the story title didn't need to be in the subject-line.
The question is, of course, whether readers would actually check warnings threads like these. So please vote, and post to tell us what you think!
Wendy
