Did You Notice? It's Fandom, Not Wal-Mart

Meta
Title:	on table of contents: "Did You Notice? It's Fandom, Not Wal-Mart" on the essay itself "Have You Noticed, It's a Fandom, Not Wal-Mart"
Creator:	K.S. Langley
Date(s):	August 18, 2003
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	Fanfiction, Warnings
External Links:	Did You Notice? It's Fandom, Not Wal-Mart, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Did You Notice? It's Fandom, Not Wal-Mart is an essay by K.S. Langley.

"A recent LJ discussion prompted me to dust off an old LoC that has done duty for me on a couple of lists in recent years and tweak it for presentation in this forum."

It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.

Excerpts

The modern reader of fan fiction seems to regard it as they do any other product or consumable available today—as if they are shopping at the Fan Fiction Supermarket. Go in with an exact list of what they're looking for, zip up and down the archives aisles, where everything is laid out in precise order, every item neatly categorized and subcategorized and labeled. A detailed list of ingredients is included in the label, so they can check it against their allergies. Get exactly what they're looking for, looking neither to the left nor right, no surprises (good or bad), and no time wasted.

But fandom isn't a store, created to meet customer needs. It doesn't exist for the needs and expectations of only the people who consume the product. It's there for the participation and enjoyment of the people who supply the product, as well. Getting you in and out of the FF Supermarket as quickly as possible, or managing your emotional allergies, is not why a writer writes.

Warnings? I don't expect authors to draw me a diagram of their stories—giving away plot points (major or minor), emotional highs and lows, etc. Why bother writing it in the first place? It is not the responsibility of an author to try to second guess every possible element in her story that somebody could be "squicked" by and warn for it—in effect, expecting the author to spoil her own story for the convenience of some readers.

Any form of entertainment—fan fiction, books, movies, whatever—carries a risk. You can check out reviews, listen to word of mouth, get the opinions of friends who have already read/viewed it. You can thumb through the book (or scroll down the computer page) and check out a few paragraphs here and there (or even read the end, if you're really anxious). But there still aren't any guarantees. (Not even story warnings are a guarantee of "safety." The writer might warn for 12 different things and still miss the things that upset or offend you. Or the author's perception of "squicky" might be 180 degrees from yours.)

The bookstore analogy (that inevitably comes up in discussion of this topic) doesn't work for me. Books don't warn of "rape/nc, h/c, partner betrayal, death, incest, underage fic," or any of the other multitude of requirements on various fannish archives. And bookstores categorize only in general terms, also unlike fan fiction. I have, for example, checked out the "Gay and Lesbian Interest" section at a local Barnes & Noble, only to discover academic texts on homosexuality side by side with the raunchiest of gay porno books (and nicely illustrated they were, too). I can go to the Science Fiction section and find, without warning, a book that features incestuous gay sex. I cannot go to the bookstore and pinpoint the "Christians for BDSM and Water Sports" section, so that I can be sure to avoid it.

Fan fiction need be no more complicated than the local bookstore. What fandom is it? Is it, say, drama, humor, action-adventure, alternate universe? Adult or general audience?

In fact, what I'd really like to see is writers rediscovering the lost art of the Story Description. I guess that, with all those archive category and warning boxes to check off (and I've seen some stories with lists that are longer than the stories they are identifying), most writers don't think it necessary to summarize their story in an enticing or intriguing way. Like the back cover or inside jacket flap of a book. Like a fanzine flyer of yore. (And sorry I am to see story warnings popping up in fanzines—the last refuge for readers and writers who don't need them or want them.)

Reactions and Reviews

Getting you in and out of the FF Supermarket as quickly as possible, or managing your emotional allergies, is not why a writer writes.

Well-put!

My first fandom was Sentinel, and I found the whole question of warnings there confusing at best. At first I didn't understand that TLAD was intended to be the no-warnings alternative to SXF, and posted a story to TLAD with the same boilerplate of warnings SXF had led me to expect. (D'oh!) Even after I figured that one out, it was a while before I had any sense of the context of the warning debate(s). (I still think the whole idea of warning for cutting Blair's hair is ridiculous to the extreme.)

For my own part, it's rare that I write something unusual enough to require a warning. Most of my stories are pretty straight (forgive the phrase) first-times, and the only category they really fall into is "slash," which on a slash list or archive hardly qualifies as a label at all. But recently I did write a dS story that was non-con, and didn't label it as such, and got some pretty strong objections from readers. I decided to label it after the fact, for my own convenience -- I don't need the tsuris of hearing that I have, however inadvertently, upset my readers.

But I think K.S. Langley is right that there's a culture of entitlement, that people seem to feel entitled to warnings...and clearly I capitulated to that culture, because it wasn't personally worth it for me to deal with the fallout of leaving a potentially upsetting story unlabelled.

Demanding spoilers from authors and flaming those who don't provide them is certainly rude. However, I don't think the fact that some people behave offensively is a reason to say that the thing they are being offensive *about* is necessarily fundamentally bad. I've heard some pretty offensive things said on the 'anti-spoiler' side of the argument too.

When posting on someone else's forum (mailing list, archive, LJ community, etc) then it will inevitably save grief all round if authors follow the custom and practice of the forum. Authors can obviously still take a 'warnings are wrong!' or 'I disclaim all my stories!' stance, but if they're departing from the accepted standard, then they have to expect negative comments.

When posting on their own private forum, then the writers can equally obviously do whatever the hell they please and quite reasonably run the 'if you don't like the way I do it, don't read here' defense.

However, warnings/ratings/spoilers don't just serve to protect delicate readers. They're also a way to help readers pick stories out of the mass of fiction out there. Personally, I try to help as many people who would enjoy my fic find it as I can, and help them to enjoy it in whatever way they prefer. So, for those who like warnings/ratings/spoilers, I provide them, and for those who don't like them I make sure they're on a separate page. I don't mind how people read my stories, although I do understand that some writers do. For people who want to control the reading experience, I can see that people asking for warnings/ratings/spoilers would be infuriating.

You know, I'm of two minds about this one, because honestly, I think the entitlement is running both ways.

In general, I think the column is talking about what I call "Disturbing Content" labels here. And thus, generally, I agree with the argument.

However...the thing is? No one forces a writer to label her story.

What's that you say? The archive requires it? The list requires it? Well, yes. But no one is forcing you to post to that list or that archive. Those are simply the requirements for submission. And yes, we can all of course debate the appropriateness of those requirements, but in the end, it comes down to this: just as readers are not entitled to have someone else provide exactly the information they want, neither are writers entitled to have someone else provide exactly the space they want for their stories.

It's possible that I'm a tad defensive on this, because while I agree that what people commonly call "warnings" are often a ridiculous amount of information about the story, I've also been scolded for limiting my reading based on things like genre, character focus, and other things that damn few people outside of fandom and English departments would consider unreasonable reading preferences. The column says that my busy schedule is not the writer's problem. That is very true. It is, however, my problem, and if I choose to accommodate it by selecting stories based on certain information, and by not selecting stories that don't provide that information. I will never lecture a writer for how she labels her stories, but I dearly wish people would quit lecturing me for preferring to have it.

And again, it comes down to this: I am not entitled to information. The writer is not entitled to have me read her story. If we both agree to that, and are both prepared to accept the consequences of it, then all is good.

Though I don't particularly like the warnings system as such I also think the labeling benefits both "sides" in the process of finding stories to read. I mean, it's not like authors wouldn't want readers to find their stories easily.

Back when I mainly read TS I had less need for categorizations and labels, like I distinctly remember one of the first warnings debates I participated in where I argued that I'd prefer if there wasn't a gen/slash label and pairings info would be skipped, because then there would be the thrill of finding out whether they'll get together or not, instead of knowing it's going to be a J/B story eventually, and that the pairing label was as spoilerish as the "warnings" (IIRC I argued in favor of broader genre categories like "humor" "drama" etc. and better blurbs). And I would have really liked that in TS, the gen and slash stories really weren't that different in their setup, something that was obvious each time someone asked on a list that they were looking for a story but couldn't remember whether it was gen or slash, despite remembering a lot of details. I didn't find many supporters for my suggestion to abandon pairing labels and the slash category in the discussion, not even among the "anti-warning" crowd. While I read gen and slash equally in TS, and would have liked the additional suspense of not knowing what it would turn out to be, there were far too many people who only wanted slash or gen stories, not both.

Personally, I am always glad to see warnings on a story because I use that information--along with the author's reputation, the fandom, the pairing, the subjective rating, and any reviews or recs I might have found--to decide whether or not I want to dedicate my time to a story.

Fanfiction is not like books because with (most) books a person can easily find both professional and reader reviews/spoilers (amazon!), summaries, etc. Often in fanfiction it's touch and go. I would not dedicate my time to reading a 100k Harry Potter story with no labeling anymore than I would to reading a Harry/Ginny, PG-rated, warning: death story! (labels which do not fit my selection criteria). But that's just me.

I liked the simile I heard on this topic once (can't remember who said it) that posting fanfiction with no labeling is like bringing a covered dish to a potluck and telling everyone else that they'll have to taste it to find out what's in it. Screw that, I'm allergic to onions!

I'm going to be That Guy and post an excerpt from my essay "Warn Responsibly" here:

> Part of the issue is *what* audience you're writing for. I think that

> many readers who want warnings don't understand that there are authors

> who _are not writing for them_. There are, like it or not, authors who

> _do not consider people who want warnings to be part of their intended

> audience_.

It's like Lucy says above - the reader isn't entitled to that information, and the writer isn't entitled to have everyone read her story. So you won't read my stories, perhaps - well, that's fine. I really, honestly don't *care*. It's fine that you want warnings, but it's also fine that I don't want to give them.

I don't really like the allergy-potluck analogy. Allergies can be very deadly, and I hardly think anyone is going to die from running into something nasty in a story. They might end up, hm, spitting it out, but an allergy is overstating the case. :)

I'm not saying that writers owe their readers warnings. It's simply a consideration that can help readers choose from the huge amount of fanfiction out there.

I have read many of your stories over the years and enjoyed them! I often read stories with no warnings and, really, I've only really regretted that one time (not with you!). In that case, I simply decided that I couldn't trust the author enough to read her stuff anymore. I'm sure she doesn't care that I don't read her. I'm sure she's writing to please herself and not her readers (or at least not me), which is fine. Good for her.

I know you're not saying warnings are owed. :) I'm just trying to point out that making that filtration mechanism available might be irrelevant to the author, because of the decisions they've made about their audience.

And I completely get the thing about authorial trust. Once shattered, that can be something really hard to recover.

Apparently my point wasn't as clear as I intended from the context, or perhaps I assume wrongly that everyone who ever has had the opportunity to participate in this particular debate also has run into this particular analogy. Ghu knows I've seen it more times than I can count.

Allow me to clarify. It's when some fans declare (insist, even) that warnings/labels/categories in fandom are just like they get and/or expect to find in a bookstore.

As a veteran of bookstores and of fandom, I disagree with the comparison.

After having several stories rejected for archiving at a certain place because they had had a Forbidden Aspect (both rape and incest, I believe, in different stories) waved over the surface during creation, and having had several people write me and get annoyed about the fact that the stories weren't labeled as having these things where I have them now, I find the entire labeling issue rather annoying.

I think it's fair to warn a reader if the story's going to devote ten pages to the horizontal mambo because there are places where having that up on your computer's a bad thing. I think it's equally fair to warn the reader if said long discussion of sex occurs in the framework of rape or incest because detail on such things Seriously Bothers some people. And that's okay. I like to know when I eat salsa if there's habaneros in it, so I can decide how much I want to eat, or if I want to eat it. But I don't expect to get a recipe handed to me with everything I eat. It would annoy me, and keep me from enjoying my food. Likewise, I don't want a detailed summary of the story or meticulous warnings of -everything-. Let me find out that it's a UST instead of a first time. Let me enjoy the fact that there's just a hint of kinky sex involved. At least one of the stories has the character hinting and hinting and not quite talking about What Happened When He Was A Kid, and the hinting and the not talking about it is the main tension in the story. If I slap a "vague discussion of incest" warning on it...it ruins the mood. At least, in my opinion it does.