That reminds me, theres a fic that i like but at least a couple of the supporting characters that we spend a bunch of chapters getting to know, then end up dying. I mean i know at least one of those deaths is canonical but there's no warning for character death on this fic. Or does ao3 only provide warnings for major character death?
I think AO3 lets you provide any kind of warnings you want? (I say, not having ever posted anything there yet and thus having no experience of whether that's actually the case). I'm not sure if there's a way to make the warnings chapter-specific, but yeah, the author could probably tag for character death.
No. You have that select list of warnings. Major Character Death is the sole death related warning from what I know. You can however tag for character death. Also as much as I hate tagging for things I have to say if you're going to say anything about what your work contains you don't say "may". If you don't want to say then pick "Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings" and do not tag for any content shit. It's entirely your right to refuse to tag for rape. Use it.
The BIG ao3 fic warnings only include major character death, but loads of the canonical tags would totally let you warn for deaths in the supporting cast, plus some authors choose to include their own text warnings in the author's notes section at the beginning of a chapter. Edit: oops, ninja'd and made irrelevant :V
Even then you could just either not fucking say anything. Or just warn that it does. Though now I'm wondering if it's related to how ff.net used to use MPAA ratings and even now still uses a format similar to them. Shit like "This film may contain mayhem, harsh language, and death" show up in trailers and the like?
Yes, exactly. (Although it's disappointing to hear that you can't actually tag for general character death.) I can see using 'may' if you're not quite sure the story's going to go in that direction. But if, eight chapters later, "oh hey, it did go in that direction"...well, then you should update the tags (if that's possible?) so that you can accurately warn about that. It might be! I know that there's a post I've seen about how trigger warnings are functionally the same as the warning that pops up before mature TV shows, too, that goes "this show may contain scenes of violence, coarse language, and nudity. viewer discretion is advised". Which I think is the sort of thing that informed a lot of the warnings in ff.net and LJ to start with? Since that's the format people would've been familiar with.
Not only is it possible to edit tags after you've posted, but AO3 helpfully provides an "edit tags" button right next to the "edit" button for a work, for when all you want to change is the tags. Only "Major Character Death" is in the official Archive Warnings section, but you can put a variety of character death-related tags in the Additional Tags section, including "Character Death," "Minor Character Death," "Canonical Character Death," "Implied/Referenced Character Death," "Temporary Character Death," and so forth.
The "and then this happened and then that happened" tone a lot of fics seem to have. When I'm reading a scene of brutal violence, I should not be bored, and just listing all the horrible things which happen is boring. It's really, really hard to pinpoint exactly what makes one not boring, though... Also, completely ridiculous things. One I just remembered; I really cannot imagine one of the most strait-laced and sensible members of the cast believing another when he claims that the whip cuts on his back were caused by an accident when cooking. What was he doing, trying to make some unusually sharp spaghetti behind his back while shirtless?
I may have already posted this quote from my friend relativelylessimportant, but it's a gripe which happens a lot:
I'm pretty sure I've seen that one in the wild on Tumblr. But yeah, stuff like "Okay I'm not trying to victim-blame, but this character could totally have killed the person assaulting them with their bare hands without breaking a sweat."
im peeved by hurt/comfort that's like 2 paragraphs of hurt and then 3k words of fluff like i am here for 2 things please give me both or just label the fic as fluff
That's why I ended up writing a spitefic involving a ten-year-old girl biting her molester's dick off. Considering what she did in canon, I thought it more likely. Plus the whole business about she's not human and her teeth are meant for shredding literal wood.
I know something that a lot of people hate is like, darkfic, fanfic that takes the original work and makes it GRIMDARK, but I... actually really enjoy that? Does anyone else or do I just have shit taste? Major gripes... uh... not really? I feel like fanfic is a place for developing writers to work on their craft and anyone who goes into it expecting the quality of a commerical work is just... mistaken? I don't know, that makes me sound sanctimonious, but... yeah.
I like a lot of GRIMDARK interpretations of canon (especially in places where canon has a huge amount of room for darker shit) but I also read a lot of Id fic, so that's me. :P And I mean, you don't have to be expecting commercial quality to be griping about something. I don't like fanfics written in first person because I don't.... like first person. It's pretty much not a quality issue, it's a me issue! And there are a fair few fanfic writers who used that to catapult themselves into the commercial world, so it's not unreasonable for them to look at other people who've been in it for twenty years and go 'okay but how do you still not know how to tenses'. (Though admittedly, 'commercial quality' wrt to fiction writing is a very low bar.)
And, e.g., Unpretty (of "Ma Kent shoots time travelers in the face," "weedhorse69," and "Bruce Wayne goes to Wal-Mart" fame) writes Batman better than the vast majority of Batman writers who are getting paid for it. Even if there is a lot more porn. (Admittedly, superhero comics are a fandom where most of the canon is fanfic that just happens to be professionally published.)
Heh, fair enough. Griping about fanfic is probably not the end of the world. I'm just thinking of stuff where like, a whole group of jerks get together and set up a wiki devoted to shitting on fanfic authors. One fic author I'm friends with got really popular on 4chan, of all places, and then the moment they did something the Collective didn't like, *bam*, hate threads everywhere. True! There is some *godawful* commercially published fiction out there. But I feel like expectations should be different when you're literally paying money for something vs you get it for free online. And this is not to say that criticism is never okay or good! There's such a thing as constructive criticism!
I get pissy about the attitude that fanfic is inherently like training wheels or something. It seems to really devalue the amazing stuff that's out there, like better-than-canon levels. It's certainly unreasonable to expect all or most to be like that, and obviously no matter how bad the fic there's no call for hate-brigading. But I will bitch and moan and hope to find something better all I friggin' please.
