there was a post going around saying ""dldr is meant for things like, âif you donât like coffee shops, donât read this coffee shop AU,â not, âi can be as racist as i want and you have to deal with it because i used a disclaimer"". a lot of people in the tags argued that this is what they mean when they say incest/p*dophilia/abuse portrayed in a positive light in fanfic is problematic. whats your opinion? xoxo
⊠phew. this ask almost passes as a legit question, but the âxoxoâ at the end is a little much.  still, what a great opportunity to talk about this ongoing problem of people ignoring warnings that a work contains content that upsets them, then complaining that they were upset when they viewed it.
(first, a side note: donât censor the word âpedophiliaâ. Itâs not a slur - itâs a content warning. If you censor it, the blacklists of people who donât want to see posts that mention pedophilia wonât catch it and they could be harmed. Just use the word.)
anti-shippers who look at a fic or fanworkâs tags and say âthis has problematic content! I better go tell the author how problematic their content is!â, I have news for you:
warnings on fanworks indicate that the person creating the work knows the content is âproblematicâ, not for all audiences, and may hurt people if they view it unsuspectingly.stop taking fanwork warnings and tags in bad faith and using them as an excuse to harass and harm creators.
warnings arenât âdisclaimersâ (and arenât used as such). theyâre the CONTAINS NAPROXIN. KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN sticker on painkillers. The content is good, even helpful, for some people, but for others who donât need it or are too young to understand what theyâre consuming could be harmed. take the warnings seriously and if you donât like what they say the fic contains, you really are better off not reading/viewing it!
âtheyâre not warnings, theyâre advertisements!â they can function as both! people who want to read that content can find it and people who donât want to read that content can avoid it. everyone is happier, except anti-shippers who are mad that people are enjoying content they donât personally approve of.
âIf the creator knows their content is problematic, then they shouldnât have created it in the first place! Or if they did, they shouldnât have put it on the internet for people to see!â well thatâs a very different conversation. What youâre saying is that you advocate for censorship, and in that case âdonât like donât readâ would be worthless: only things you like would be allowed to exist in the first place.
But letâs talk about how âthey shouldnât have put it on the internet for people to see.â the basis for this is, I know, that it could corrupt the unsuspecting youth who read the bad content. But isnât this a bit contradictory? if a fanwork is tagged with a warning that it contains abuse, everyone who looks at the fanwork is going to know that 1) the author believes that abuse is bad and needs to be warned for, and 2) the work contains abuse. Taking these points together, no matter how positively the abuse is depicted, a viewer has foreknowledge that itâs abusive and the creator thinks abuse is bad. Â Itâs simply insulting to imply that viewers will look at the abuse in the fanwork so uncritically as to not think itâs horrible after receiving such a warning.
In fact, Iâve heard anecdotal evidence that people who have been raped or abused (or still being abused) or undergone other harm have read fics with these warnings and because of the warnings, realized what had happened to themselves was not okay. Â If anti-shippers had their way, those fics wouldnât even exist, much less be warned for.
Iâm about to say something radical, so brace yourself:Â
because tagging warnings is the accepted way to warn people about dangerous content in fandom, the things more likely to cause confusion and harm in fanworks are the things that arenât warned for.
Even the most positive depiction of abuse would be spoiled by a warning. Can you imagine if the beginning of every copy of Nabokovâs Lolita started with âWarning: this work contains depictions of csa, abuse, and child grooming.â It would force readers who are blind to the hints that the narrator is unreliable to read the work with a very different eye, and I doubt most people would read it and conclude itâs a love story the way many people do today.
Now Lolita was intended to be a kind of monster story from the point of view of the monster - it was never meant to be a positive depiction at all. Nabokovâs work was too subtle for most people, but he was a master storyteller. I think if he could, heâd go back and add a warning so people would stop getting the wrong idea.
In fandom, where we have a widely-accepted tagging system, potentially harmful content that the creator adds deliberately will be warned for. But the potentially harmful content that the creator doesnât know about wonât be - and thatâs the stuff that tends to be a lot more sneaky and insidious.
Letâs take your example:Â
âi can be as racist as i want and you have to deal with it because i used a disclaimer".
Racism does crop up a lot in fanworks, but not in the way this implies. Â Thereâs a huge difference between a creator recognizing racism exists and utilizing it as an aspect of a setting or acknowledging it in a respectful, truthful way and a creator who does not recognize their own racist blind spots and therefore ends up perpetuating harmful stereotypes or providing racist narration without realizing it.
The former tends to be warned for; the latter never is because the creator doesnât even know theyâre being racist. The former may be painful, because racism is shitty and harmful and real, but a person can steer clear if they want to avoid it and the warning shows the content is known to be bad. The latter is more painful because itâs not just depicting racism: it is in fact perpetuating racism.
So which is actually worse: the fic that has a warning for racism or the fic that doesnât?
And this can be applied to anything. A fic that depicts a character being abused but doesnât warn for abuse tells me that the author doesnât know the work contains abuse (which is worrying for the safety of the author). A fic that contains dubious consent but the author doesnât warn for noncon/dubcon/rape tells me that the author has a poor understanding of consent.  These are the fics that are more likely to be dangerous. Fics without content warnings are also the ones most likely to unironically and uncritically depict the bad behavior in a positive light - because the authors have been taught by the rest of society outside fandom that what theyâve depicted is normal/not harmful. They are victims, and they need help, not people yelling at them about how problematic they are.
Two last notes, which Iâll try to keep short:
If a fanwork depicts a relationship thatâs canonically unhealthy in a world where itâs fluffy and healthy, they are not responsible for putting warnings on their fic that pertain to the canon version of the ship.  For instance: Kylo and Rey are enemies in current Star Wars continuity and Kylo tried to torture Rey for information. But if a fic is set in a future where Kylo is well-adjusted and happy and dating Rey in a non-abusive relationship, the fic does not need to warn for âabuseâ. the fic doesnât contain abuse. Let it go.
No creator is beholden to using anti definitions of words like âpedophiliaâ, âabuseâ, and âincestâ for their warnings. The definition of what antis call âpedophiliaâ, âincestâ, and âabuseâ varies from fandom to fandom - sometimes from pairing to pairing. While tags will always be somewhat subjective, the wide variety of definitions these words have in anti-shipper parlance makes them all but meaningless, so use them when you see fit, not when antis demand it.  If antis have a problem with it, theyâll just have to start treating ship tags as warnings* and avoid all depictions of ships they donât like. (which is what we all wish theyâd do anyway.)
And now for the final irony: every time anti-shippers use warnings as a reason to go yell at people about how their fanworks are bad, antis give creators less incentive to tag warnings. People might start to hope that if they just donât warn up front for the potentially dangerous content people will stop yelling at them without even looking at the work itself. Or if the work is borderline (âmaybe this is abusive but maybe itâs notâ), they may opt to go without the warnings so they can avoid the extra trouble. this is already happening with dubious consent depictions. If a noncon warning gets you yelled at, then fics where the consent isnât completely denied will just not get warned for at all, and thatâs fucked up. Â And when the warnings arenât there, people are way more likely to stumble on something of a nature that upsets them!Â
So as usual, in their crusade to eradicate all content that isnât unquestionably wholesome and pure antis make everything a little less safe for everyone. Thanks, guys.  (please stop.)
and creators: please, depict terrible things in your fanworks in whatever light you choose - and warn for them. you might accidentally help save someone from a real situation thatâs terrible.
*ship tags also work as both warnings and advertisements, as it happens. Funny, isnât it?
origamiaround
ellievsbear
stormborns
snowghoul
