Yeah, with books, generally, one can glean the topics from either the back cover summary, or the blurbs from the folks recommending it.

And you still wind up with authors acting like complete asshats (Alice Hoffman, I'm looking at you) because they take exception that a reviewer didn't like their book and "spoiled the plot."

"This Beautiful Unique Creative Snowflake has been rated Z for strong language, sexual situtions, and explicit use of the color orange"

Yeah, I've never noticed Quentin Tarantino crying "But, but, MAH ARTISTIC INTEGRITEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Except then there are authors who feel that even the presence of a whitefonted warning gives something away.

I can see that too.

Personally, and granted I'm not dealing with personal trauma in this, there are things in RPF that I do not want to read because the RPs involved have expressed discomfort. With very few trusted-author exceptions, I don't read fic without the thumbs up from Cass. It's not that arduous when in fic-reading mode to ask your friends also in that mode (since we tend to run in packs on this), "Is this story alright for me?".

Yeah, I've never noticed Quentin Tarantino crying "But, but, MAH ARTISTIC INTEGRITEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

That's because when he says it, it's MAH MOTHERFUCKING ARTISTIC INTEGRITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

But, with books, someone with triggers can at least go to Amazon, and most of the time, the reviews will include vague allusions to (but also sometimes spoilery descriptions of) big ugly triggery stuff. So if that reader wanted info, they could get it. Fanfic doesn't have that equivalent.

Yes - but such is the extent of my privilege (this despite the fact that people I love have been assaulted) that it genuinely didn't occur to me that people had to interact with books like that, in that kind of defensive fashion.

I get it now.

And, I mean, I generally do provide adequate warnings on my fic headers posted to communities, or when I archive, and, hell, it's not like I'm mostly writing stuff that would be triggery. But I hadn't been cluesticked into thinking about whether scenes would be triggery for people prior to reading that essay. Now it's going to colour how I write and how I warn. Which is a good thing. (And, really, I don't think you need to be more explicit than 'deals with potentially triggery issues' in your warning - something generic and heads-up-ish would be fine, surely, without spoiling one's storytelling.)

Also, books are unusual in that regard - movies, TV shows and video games ALL come with "This Beautiful Unique Creative Snowflake has been rated Z for strong language, sexual situtions, and explicit use of the color orange" warnings on them.

True. But that is a pretty recent innovation. I mean, its certainly had its merits, but I don't know if its fair to declare that a default. Particularly for a form which is far more like a form with no warnings at all.

Except then there are authors who feel that even the presence of a whitefonted warning gives something away.

Maybe use orangefont?

(And, really, I don't think you need to be more explicit than 'deals with potentially triggery issues' in your warning - something generic and heads-up-ish would be fine, surely, without spoiling one's storytelling.)

THIS.

Granted, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a spoiler-ho who doesn't read much fic, but my general feeling is - if your work can't stand up to the kind of vague minor spoilers we're talking about? It probably needs rewriting anyway.

wrod. I don't know, Connie, how much do they discuss it in the story? If they do, I might, but if you're too crazy about that, every story about fictional abuse survivor Tim Bayliss should have a warning on it(Many of them ought to anyway, but that's more a 95% of everything is crap thing.)

God, 95% of everything is crap, isn't it? I do find that the majority of the stories I click on in SPN have me hitting the back button within a paragraph.

sighs

It's not that I don't grok that there are lots of attractive people on the show, because, yes, I am shallow - but, ffs, I'd so much rather read them in-character chatting over coffee than out of character shagging.