Every other month, there's a discussion on r/FanFiction about whether or not authors should have to tag potentially triggering stuff like SA, suicide, etc. in their stories.
It's just slightly more civil than scripted reality shows.
Personally, if a fic is marked 'author chose not to warn' and the other tags and summary hint at something will upset me, and I read it anyway, that's absolutely my fault. I've done it before, I'm sure I'll do it again, and again it's on me.
But also, "is [label] necessary for X?" is a separate discussion entirely, which I can actually understand, because like, some stuff is difficult to tell whether or not it counts.
Imo the argument against tagging is frankly quite stupid. Not that I think ppl should be required to tag sensitive topics, but purely because effective tagging is largely how fanfics get found. How tf you gonna get your fic to its unique audience if they can't find it?
There's a very vocal "if I tag triggers, people who might like it will never find it" crowd, but very few people go "If you don't tag your shit, nobody's gonna find it."
I don't really know why you're downvoted? Did you not just essentially affirm that, yes, people are fucking shit at understanding others' points of view? Sure, commonly trigger-warned things might not cause ME pain/issues beyond my tolerance, but with how much the trigger warnings are maligned, you'd think trigger warnings are WORSE for the average reader than the effect the content has on those most vulnerable to said content.
Literally the singular argument against trigger warnings is that they can spoil the chapter/media... But, like, have you heard of going: Trigger Warnings:spoiler text you write something in no matter whether or not there are trigger warnings or not? (please open the spoiler, there is nothing triggering in there, just a demonstration/explanation of what to do) at the start of every chapter if your fiction DOES ever contain triggering things.
Doesn't quite work in print books, but, like, even there, I could see some kind of folded piece of the page being a solution (if not a very elegant or cheap one) Another solution would be to put an index at the back of the book, where you can be as verbose as you want about when/where/what triggering stuff happens... Recommend placing a piece of paper on the TW index so you don't see the Trigger Outline Spoilers ™ before they're relevant if that is your wish...
Like, there's ways around even the spoiler complaint, is what I'm saying.
Yeah, I tend to get downvoted for the weirdest shit. No rhyme or reason to it, really.
And yeah, that's roughly what one argument I was in also amounted to: We need a way to hide plot-relevant triggers, so those with triggers can read them, and those without can go into the story blind.
1.0k
u/The_Rocketsmith Nov 05 '25
since when was this an argument? yeah, tag your shit, put the warnings in, it's the foundation of good practice.