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   13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Monday, 03-Jun-2024 17:40:19 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

   #WritersCoffeeClub 3/6: Should books include a content warning?

   I'm a great enthusiast of content warnings, and feel that at least one my published works would have benefitted from having one.

   I'm going to push for them in future fiction publications, having got into the habit of using them when making small narrative games, although the practice is far less normalised in publishing than in interactive media.

   That said, in most cases, being clear about what the work is is sufficient.

   I know what I'm signing up for when I read body horror, for instance.

   But I'd still prefer to have a heads up if I should be expecting graphic scenes of sexual abuse or the torture of children, for example.

   This isn't much of a problem for me these days, but has been before and some scenes still are. A general hint allows me to be not pick up the book when in a vulnerable frame of mind.

   Equally, some of my work carries warnings for self-harm and drug use because those can be triggers that a person with that history may wish to avoid at certain points. (Or seek out at others, because humans are complicated little animals.)

   Of course, warnings can only be general. The Fifth Season and Perdido Street Station both include traumatic scenes that are part of the emotional core of their stories. Revealing details in advance may arguably gut them of their power for some readers, but a general content warning would not.

   The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, while generally a decent read for me, would have seriously benefited from a CW, as I went in unwarned and early on hit on intensely male-gazey rape scene that exists as part of a revenge/liberation setup. While it's also part of the narrative core of its story... it's not one I liked or could relate to at all.

   It's widely claimed that Stieg Larsson was inspired to create the character of Lisbeth Salander because he was present at the gang-rape of a girl he knew and did nothing to intervene, which would certainly explain a lot of how that scene feels. It's a rape scene that feels like it's very much not coming from the perspective of someone who's been raped.

   On a related note regarding that book, I'm also extremely over animal death as a cheap metaphor (hi, modern crime fiction, often pairing it with exaggeratedly detailed rape scenes for a one-two), but I don't expect to ever get satisfaction on that front.

   My ability to deal with this stuff depends partly on my head at the time and partly on how they're handled by by the author.

   Content warnings help me manage the former, and putting the damn book down deals with the latter.

   Anyway, if, like me, you sometimes care more about being forewarned than being spoiled, here are some useful sites:

   Does The Dog Die
   https://www.doesthedogdie.com/

   Book Trigger Warnings
   https://booktriggerwarnings.com/

   • Embed this notice
     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Monday, 03-Jun-2024 18:10:32 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • @now@n

     @DoubleArobase Yeah, I definitely feel CWs should be as un-euphemistic as possible, and that's a great example.

     Watersports and golden showers are useful code words if you're trying to slip something past people without yelling "we like piss here!! in sexy ways!! but in CWs you really want to be as explicit and blunt as possible.

     See also hardsports as a term. (For passers by - a ?maybe only British English? term for a sexual kink for shit, which I suspect originates from needing a word you can actually print in a newspaper ad for your services.)

     And catch-all terms like edgeplay are intensely unhelpful.

     Gotta say, though, fanfiction and smut authors are amazing at CWs and provide an example that we would do well to follow in other genres.

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     @now@n (doublearobase@toot.aquilenet.fr)'s status on Monday, 03-Jun-2024 18:10:36 JST @now@n

     in reply to

     @HauntedOwlbear Loads of good points and ressources in your post! May I add that sometimes the content tagging gets so niche that people can miss it? I know of someone who kept being surprised by "untagged" piss kink in fanfics, then we collectively realized that they thought "watersports" meant going to the beach.

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     13 barn owls in a trenchcoat (hauntedowlbear@eldritch.cafe)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 04:13:45 JST 13 barn owls in a trenchcoat

     in reply to

     • Lilly Hunter

     @LaChasseuse I think there's a definite movement towards CWs in literature at the moment, a lot of it driven by authors writing from their own experience of trauma.

     (Hence the question coming up for discusson!)

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     Lilly Hunter (lachasseuse@mastodon.scot)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 04:13:47 JST Lilly Hunter

     in reply to

     @HauntedOwlbear So interesting to read this post, because just this week I bought a book by a author from Nunavut and it was the first time I have ever seen a content warning in a book: