#on warnings

[chamerionwrites]

Like this is personal and anecdotal and I do recognize that I am probably in the minority here (or if not, that people with a different experience are definitely way louder about it). But. Personally speaking, I am significantly more likely to be triggered (and WAY more likely to be badly triggered) by a story’s framing than by its content. And content warnings are themselves part of a story’s framing. Ironically, blackly hilariously, this actually means that an exhaustively tagged story which overlooks something is vastly more likely to do a number on me than a story labeled with some kind of extremely nonspecific Yeah Shit Gets Fucked Up Here tag.

Again, I recognize that this is personal and anecdotal and that I am likely in the minority. But I also don’t think this is in any way unique enough that it shouldn’t be something we consider when we talk about why people might go a less-is-more route with content warnings.

[chamerionwrites]

It’s ultimately not the most meaningful thing in the world to be angry about, but I do still get lowkey angry whenever I remember how the Kenobi show did content warnings in PEAK Congrats That’s The Worst Anyone’s Ever Done It fashion.

And it’s really not about the thing itself. I love Star Wars but let’s be honest it’s often silly, and Disney is evil, and this show in particular was VERY half-cooked. I can’t say I’m disappointed, because that would imply that I ever had higher expectations.

So what upsets me is not that this particular show handled warnings poorly. It’s that the specific *way* they were handled poorly is so emblematic of a particular, pervasive cultural blind spot, about what kinds of violence count as violence and what sorts of people matter.

[chamerionwrites]

This for the record is why*, to me, genre descriptions such as "cozy fantasy" "cozy mystery" or even "cozy horror" (?????) are an anti-recommendation that make me all but physically shudder and run screaming in the opposite direction.** It’s not that soothing/fluffy/formulaic/low-stakes/"escapist" fiction is inherently evil or that anyone who enjoys it is some kind of fascist-in-waiting (a point which the linked essay makes). It’s because the uncritical elevation of ""cozy"" art as the best and most moral kind does have a lot of conservative authoritarian undertones, and unfortunately a considerable chunk of people who describe fiction as cozy (see also "hopepunk") ARE engaging in that sort of moralizing as opposed to just using the word as a morally-neutral descriptor.

*also because the way in which people deploy "cozy" as a genre descriptor frequently smells very strongly of twee faux-progressive "idk why but cottagecore is for girls and dark academia is for boys" gender essentialism.

**The STRENGTH of this reaction is, self-admittedly, probably because I have personal baggage in this area.

[chamerionwrites]

Maybe I'm just terminally prone to hairsplitting but while most of those doing it seem to mean well, personally I often find it really troubling the way people use the language of consent to discuss labels and warnings on fiction

[chamerionwrites]

A thing I did not have on my bingo card about Tumblr’s implementation of mature content warnings was how firmly they would cement for me something that I kinda already knew, namely the hilarious dark irony that one of my more reliable triggers is. Trigger warnings. Like it’s not typically day-ruining or unmanageable, but I see a “mature content” label on a piece of art with a super tame and stylized and non-gory depiction of blood and BOY does a stupid little danger alarm start blaring insistently in my brain. Funniest possible example of competing access needs

[chamerionwrites]

It’s just…imo what frequently gets overlooked when people talk about content warnings for fiction is that nobody can possibly warn for every single thing that might disturb someone in a story. You just can’t. Trauma (let alone discomfort) is idiosyncratic. And so by its very nature, the act of creating those warning labels involves making judgment calls about what is and isn’t “worthy” of a warning. Which by its very nature involves making judgment calls about what kinds of violence, harm, and horror are “expected” or “reasonable” or “normal,” vs what kinds are extreme enough to be broadly and predictably upsetting.

Sometimes this looks like the distinction between what’s graphic, foregrounded and explicit vs what’s alluded to or glossed over. (Which in and of itself is at least a little bit worth interrogating, imo, given the number of people who find that subtext and implication hits harder and lingers longer for them in fiction than in-your-face violence and horror.) But sometimes it looks like the distinction between the kinds of violence that are at least nominally socially unacceptable and/or individualized (often various kinds of interpersonal abuse, or sensitivities related to death/grief, mental illness, graphic descriptions of physical injuries or other conditions that many people get queasy about, etc), and the kinds of violence that are already broadly normalized and invisibilized (often various kinds of systemic injustice). And that sucks!

[chamerionwrites]

Idk man but as a person whose primary source of outsized flinch responses was an environment where everything had to be sunny and fluffy and harmonious all the time at least on the surface (and this meant you were never allowed to make anyone uncomfortable by questioning the status quo, or processing grief or complexity except in the most rigidly policed and specified ways, or pointing out injustice), the idea that anything vaguely upsetting isn’t fit for public discussion or consumption and should be relegated to shameful dark corners plastered with the equivalent of long term nuclear waste warnings because Think Of The Trauma Victims feels uh. Fucked up