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Ultimately what gets under my skin is that I feel the burdens and expectations of like - Content Warnings Culture, as it currently exists? - fall really heavily on anyone seeking to confront/process/learn about complex or difficult subjects, in a way that is not merely unfair but that selects for a sort of socially mandated toxic positivity which frequently makes spaces deeply hostile to trauma survivors (theoretically, the people that content warnings are actually FOR).

Many people's intuitive response is going to be well yeah, obviously the burden falls more heavily on folks exploring darker subjects. Those are the subjects likely to trigger people. Which is a perfectly sensible and understandable point of view, but the first problem is that I'm not at all sure that it's true. "Dark" subjects are probably more likely to discomfort people, sure. I'm very skeptical that they are significantly more likely to TRIGGER people, because that simply isn't how trauma triggers work. So often they're idiosyncratic and innocuous.

Going with fandom as the example, since that's a space where content warnings are both very normalized and a very common subject of debate...I am 100% confident there are people out there who (eg) had a traumatic miscarriage and who find some varieties (maybe even all varieties!) of soft and fluffy kidfic extremely triggering. I'm 100% confident there are survivors of spiritual abuse that find certain kinds of religion/god talk (and I don't just mean oppressive institutional religion, I mean the DND cleric with a really fun relationship to their deity) extremely triggering. I am 100% confident there are people who have survived controlling abusive relationships that flinch from the kind of slightly overbearing caretaking behavior that lots of other people (judging by the prevalence of a certain sort of hurt/comfort fic) find really cathartic and comforting to read about. Those are just the first three examples straight off the top of my head. I suspect they're all reasonably common examples. And I know there's an almost infinite number of others.

When it's explained I think most people are willing to understand that Fluffy Kittens And Rainbows content can frequently be a trauma trigger too. I think most of them also immediately understand that it would be unreasonable to expect any author to anticipate and tag for every possible permutation of kidfic so that I (hypothetical-I) can avoid the specific handful that might ruin my day. If that's something I struggle with, then either I avoid that genre of fanfic entirely, or I read the story summary and evaluate how likely I am to end up in a bad place and exercise my best judgment. I bring a certain Dead Dove Do Not Eat sensibility to the table: this bag is clearly but not exhaustively labeled, I might enjoy a mourning dove but I'll be sad if I find a pigeon, and either I decide I'm willing to risk the latter option or I don't open it at all. This is the clear reasonable answer to an issue that's inherently going to look different from person to person!

But unfortunately many people are NOT willing to be this gracious when it comes to recognizing that authors exploring dark subjects cannot possibly be expected to warn for every single individual facet of the darkness, either. There's this unspoken (and I think in most cases unexamined and unintentional, tbf) double standard where if someone is triggered by a ~wholesome~ story that is assumed to be an unfortunate accident that couldn't and can't be helped, whereas if someone is triggered by a ~grimdark~ story that is assumed to be a failure or even malice on the part of the author.

And this double standard ticks me off, okay. First for the blatant unfairness. Second because where it inevitably, unfailingly ends is with people being punished for writing honestly about their own pain and anger and grief, like a perfect mirror of the way society already fails trauma survivors: lip service compassion so long as you don't make anyone uncomfortable. Making abuse and injustice taboo to talk about while remaining unwilling to confront how and why it actually happens.

And third, because imo the furor over walling off depictions of anything upsetting often calcifies into this climate of just...refusal to treat serious subjects seriously. Of valuing and incentivizing lightheartedness-to-the-point-of-whitewashing over artistic honesty. At the individual level I don't think there's anything wrong with people choosing not to explore darker subjects in their reading or writing. But when that gets encoded into the culture of a space, when people get punished for deviating from it, I think that's insidious.

And this is what insistence that there is some Objectively Correct way to tag things which will lead to 0% of people ever being triggered often feels like to me. Yes - if I write a story in which child death or bigotry or sexual violence or whatever is a central focus then I think it's courteous to label that, or else to slap a big old Here Be Dragons on the story in the form of a Choose Not To Warn tag. But if (eg) I am writing a story about war, signposting all along that it is About War, and I make a non-graphic allusion to any of the above, and people get mad if they aren't all meticulously tagged...sorry but this is like needing to be told not to eat a Tide pod. This is Dead Dove Do Not Eat in FULL effect. You picked up a story that was clearly labeled as a war story and expected to find anything other than war when you opened the bag. What's more, imho complaining about it is not merely absurd but actively offensive: if you're going into such story with the assumption that it will politely pull a veil over anything that might cause you discomfort so that you can engage with war only insofar as it entertains you, that is VERY much a you problem. Deal with it on your own time rather than disrespecting yourself, the author, art in general, and the entire topic of war. People are going to misunderstand me here, but this is not me saying suck it up snowflake. This is me saying that serious subjects deserve the respect of serious engagement, that it's perfectly understandable for someone to find those subjects upsetting, but that they need to apply the exact same strategies as someone who knows that a Fluffy Kittens Kidfic might upset them rather than expecting every serious story to apologize for its existence with 50+ tags that undoubtedly still won't capture every nuance, because if a story could be perfectly summarized there'd be no point reading beyond the summary in the first place.

This is getting way too long, but the TL;DR is that I do think tags and warnings are valuable and useful. I also think the way they're often conceptualized is misguided and even harmful. People need to recognize that they are a very blunt and imperfect tool that cannot replace personal judgment. People need to stop treating them as a way to avoid general discomfort as opposed to trauma triggers (the chance to avoid discomfort is a useful curb-cutter effect, but gearing them primarily toward the former actually makes them less effective for the latter). And people need to understand that there is always going to be a degree of subjectivity involved, that the longer and richer and more layered a story is the more subjective the tagging process is going to get, and therefore that insisting on Perfect Objectively Correct Tags is - unintentionally or not - incentivizing shorter, less thoughtful, more easily digestible stories that avoid dealing with complicated or painful subjects. And I hope that most people don't actually want that.

#on warnings #purity discourse #but this isn't just about purity wank this is also about people simplifying the issue down to 'just tag correctly'#often there IS no objectively correct and imo you're doing a well-intentioned disservice by claiming there is #fandom #my posts #*braces for impact*

@smthscoming | ophion & nemesis

"this is how you spend your days?” ophion bellowed, startling many students, interrupting the nearly as loud voice of the professor. she stood in the doorframe of the lecture room, a hand bracing the door open. “you coach impressionable students when you yourself wouldn't sit still for but a moment! only a moment is all i asked!” her voice was loud. it had been centuries since they had seen one another. “may we have a word-- outside.”

#( * ʜᴇᴀᴠʏ ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴇᴀʀꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʀᴏᴡɴ ! ) OPHION / THREAD.#oh god #smthscoming #*braces for impact*

Woah. Rebellion really is getting a sequel...?

Well, let's see if this goes anywhere further than that Concept Movie from years ago. The teaser trailer sure showed less than said concept. Could be a good or a bad sign.

But now I wonder what the situation was with the Concept Movie - has the production been in development hell since then? How does Urobuchi’s tweet about writing the script before Thunderbolt Fantasy fit into all this? Eh, probably a story we won’t get until after the movie is released - if ever.

Honestly, though, even if this is going somewhere, I don't know how to feel about the news!

I mean, I've been looking forward to a sequel ever since I saw Rebellion in 2013. It’s probably my favorite movie, so I have incredibly high hopes for a continuation!

But getting this news at this specific time, when us Higurashi fans are in the middle of waiting uneasily for Sotsu... oh boy. Just reliving the Rebellion fandom apocalypse through Higurashi Gou has made me utterly exhausted with the idea of going through that experience a THIRD time with Walpurgis no Kaiten. D:

And I can’t help but wonder how far the Madoka Magica/Higurashi parallels will go. In the end, which continuation will be more accepted? Will they resolve their central conflicts (and therefore, the central relationships of the story) in the same way, or not?

And will either of them manage to reunite the fandom? I doubt that’s possible, at this point.