Warnings - the final frontier

[rheasilvia]

I have a story up on AO3 with a "rape/non-con" archive warning. Today, I received a (very polite and not at all flamey!) comment remarking that the rape was difficult to read, and that a trigger warning might have been a good idea.

Incidentally, I also thought that a trigger warning would be a good idea for this story. That's why I used the archive warning.

Now I'm wondering - did the reader overlook the warning, or did she feel there should have been another warning within the text itself to mark the passages in question? I suspect I'm not entirely up to date on the eternal "warnings" discussion.

Comments

[carose59]

What kind of warning did she want? "Rape, and not the regular, not-upsetting kind, but the kind that might disturb you"?

[rheasilvia]

Good question... I think I'm going to ask, nicely. At this point, I'm assuming she simply didn't see the warning.

(The other theory I came up with was that she was expecting a different character to be raped. Sometimes that makes all the difference to readers... but not wanting to see certain characters in certain roles is a different issue entirely, and one that I will certainly never warn for.)

[solo]

I'd assume she overlooked it and gently point it out to her. Then she can tell you if that's not what she meant.

[rheasilvia]

Yeah, it makes the most sense that she simply didn't see the warning. Of course, in her shoes I would have double-checked to see whether there had been a warning was there before commenting on its absence, but hey.

I will ask her, I think. At this point I'm too curious not to. :-)

[zing_och]

I have a bad habit of not reading what my mind sees as headlines / titles, so I overlook the archive warnings sometimes because they're bolded. I'd check before commenting though!

[rheasilvia]

That's really only a bad habit if you are at risk of being triggered when overlooking a relevant warning... otherwise, I'd say it's simply a habit. ;-)

I tend not to pay much attention to warnings myself, but then, I don't have any real triggers. The worst thing that can happen to me is that I will intensely dislike the story or something about the story, and either stop reading it or forge on, to have disgruntled/angry/disgusted thoughts about it later on. Not so bad, considering.

[zing_och]

Heh - that's one way of looking at it. *g*

If I actually was in danger of being triggered, I'd probably be a lot more careful.

I don't have any triggers, but there are fandoms (and moods) which make me dislike reading deathfic, and when a major character dies in the end I get mad about that only to scroll up and see.... right, there it is. In bold, even! And I only have myself to blame. Not too bad, but annoying.

I'm also incredibly bad at remembering fic titles for the same reason.

[amalthia]

Another problem with the Rape/Non-Con warning is people using it when there isn't actually any rape/non-con in the story!

I've also seen it used in fic where the rape is mentioned but not described in great detail or depth. So maybe people assume that all Rape/Non-Con stories are like that???

[rheasilvia]

Argh, really? That's a rather unfortunate trend, because it does water down the rape/non-con warning as a whole.

With the story in question, I do also warn about references to rape/non-con in the additional tags (since the rape is still an issue even after the actual event, so I thought it might merit an additional note). Maybe that misled the reader into believing that references were all I was talking about with the general warning...?

[amalthia]

This happened to my friend, she wrote a graphic rape scene, used the Rape/Non-con warning then someone complained it wasn't enough so she added additional tags and then someone read those tags and complained that they misread them into thinking the rape/non-con wasn't going to be graphic. Truly, at this point I have zero sympathy...If it's in the "Warning" field proceed with caution! There is no winning.