I'm weird about it. I'd rather the warning not be there--I'd rather get into the story and see what happens, accept that the death is a part of the story. But if there is a warning? More often than not I'll pass it by. It's not that I mind character death. I just usually don't want to be depressed as hell over a fic.

See, I'm not skipping those stories because I don't want to be depressed over the character death. I'm skipping them because there's a warning.

I won't read fanfic that doesn't have some sort of a blurb unless it comes recommended. Other than that... I sympathize with the authors who don't like to put up warnings, and I understand that there are some fandoms that get really nuts with what you have to warn for. (Is it true or apocryphal that there were required haircut warnings in Sentinel? I've never quite believed it, but I know I've seen that claimed.)

That said, when reading fanfic I do tend to prefer situations where I know basically where I'm getting into - for instance, I prefer to know a pairing ahead of time, because I tend to have very limited numbers of pairings I'm interested in reading about. I generally prefer to know whether I should expect sex or not. I don't actually feel the need to know whether or not a character dies, or whether there's a happy ending, anything like that.

Mostly I guess I like to have enough information to make a vaguely informed choice as to whether the story's likely to be enough to my taste at that moment to be worth reading. All that goes out the window once I've got an author I trust, though.

... and I should clarify, now that Katie's posted, that I'm making a distinction between a summary/blurb (which all stories should have, I think) and a warning (which is generally listed on a separate line that says "WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH. AND NO, IT'S NOT CONNOR." or the like).

See, I'm not skipping those stories because I don't want to be depressed over the character death. I'm skipping them because there's a warning.

It annoys me when people warn for everything under the sun. But on this issue, I've seen cases where an author didn't warn for character death and the flood of angry emails and abuse they get is way over the top. So I take CD warnings as more self-defense than anything.

I do like to have some idea what I'm up for when I go into a story. Pairing, for one. I don't want every story twist spelled out in an author's note, but I do like to have some idea of what the tone of the story is likely to be. Fluffy and funny or angsty and dark is all the level of detail I need, but I do want to know at least that much because sometimes I'm really in the mood for one or the other.

Personally I don't want to know if a character is going to die, with a warning I'll spend most of the story wondering who's going to die. Unless the characters start off dead.

Sometimes it's frustrating because someone will put a death warning and the character that dies isn't a main character--either in the show or in the story. Which is totally frustrating because I wonder who's going to die and then it's really anticlimatic.

It's weird though because sometimes the authors won't put a warning on the story but a person recommending the story will. I wonder how the writers feel about that.

Ooh, I hate plot warnings of all kinds. It's the equivalent of putting "and at the end you find out that the ex-boyfriend did it" on the back cover of a mystery, and I rarely read stories that have them.

Yes. This.

On balance, I'd far rather not be told that someone's going to die, or turn into a weregoldfish. I'd rather let the plot develop and surprise me. If it's well done, fair enough. If it's badly done, then that will piss me off - the badness, rather than the particular plot point.

I'd also be perfectly happy if we didn't have the whole pairing convention, actually. I mean, sure, I read Clark/Lex. But it's nice to not know what's going to happen, I think. To be fair, I mostly just read stuff on the basis of either knowing the author's previous work (and thus trusting the quality will be good) or else on the basis of a rec. So it's not like I'm looking for stuff that's Clark/Lex, or Chloe/Lex, or Lana/Lex, or Clark/Mercy, or whatever - I'm generally reading something because it's by Hope or Thamiris or Te, and I trust them.

But it's hypocritical of me to say this, because it's not like I don't ever read things on the basis of pairing. Te's response to that pornalicious Wolverine/Nightcrawler comicbook cover design, for example - I read that because I wanted to see her take on Logan/Kurt, and I'd happily read Magneto/Wolverine by any damn person in the hopes that they could write well, because I want to see someone use that potential.

Okay, ignore me wrt pairings. But in terms of key plot points (and sometimes the pairing is a key plot point, and that's when I'd rather not be spoiled) I'd rather just find out as I read. It's like those damned book blurbs and film ads that give it all away, and then however clever the writer or director have been, you're not going to fall for their red herrings.

I hate warnings. I only use them when they make me giggle, like putting Character Death/Non-Con in my warning for Xander On Top. I was a heartbeat short of adding "comedy" for the genre.

Oh, the keyword debate! Fun!

As a matter of principle as a writer, I don't do specific warnings. The farthest I'll go is to say: "Angst within" or "Wear your seatbelt, it's going to be a bumpy ride" or something like that. Most of the people who read my stuff know by now that it's likely Bad Things are going to happen, although I haven't yet killed off any lead characters in any of my stories (Huh. Must reconsider that...).

That said, the down side of no warnings and limited summaries is that you may (a) lose readers who have been 'burned' in the past but unwarned stories and now won't read anything without extensive summaries, or (b) piss off readers who didn't realize that anything goes and who let you know, publicly or privately, that they feel they've been "misled" or some such thing. I've seen the most incredible flamewars on the "misleading headers" issue -- including flamewars about misleading pairings! ::rolls eyes::

It's a weird thing. Nobody demands warnings on commercial novels, but I think that it's because fic tells stories about characters to whom readers already have a fierce emotional attachment. If I write a novel in which the main character's lover dies in the first 50 pages, and spend the rest of the novel examine his response to that, not too many people would be outraged. However if I wrote an unwarned Mulder death in a story labeled "MSR, casefile", I'd be likely to be flamed from here to kingdom come.

A good friend of mine wrote a fabulous XF story in which at about the halfway mark, Scully died suddenly. "On the fourth day, she died." It was brilliant, and people went bananas. Many put the story down and never finished it, which was their loss, because the death was an integral part of the plot. What pissed me off is that the people who recommend the story now say, "Oh, and it's CD but not really and it all comes out okay in the end," which completely undercuts the power of the death.

Don't ruin the story and its power by catering to the most sensitive people in the fandom.

That said, I do have more sympathy for people who are upset about unwarned sexual violence. Or graphic violence of any kind, and I do give general warnings about violence. Still, I'm never going to reveal plot-points in headers or summaries.

What I have no sympathy for is for people who get absolutely outraged by sneaky twists or unlabeled pairings. There's a very funny little XF story that ends with Scully in bed with Skinner: the writer who posted that was pilloried, and even had a reader claim she was nauseated by the pairing. All this for an 11K postep.

When Fialka posted Arizona Highways she was hammered by the tinhat brigade because she didn't put S/O warnings on it, and there's a bit of business where Scully has a sexual encounter with a character named Kresge. Fans are really insane.

"Angst within" or "Wear your seatbelt, it's going to be a bumpy ride" or something like that.

That's exactly the kind of "warning" I like to see. Sets the mood without giving anything away.

It's a weird thing. Nobody demands warnings on commercial novels, but I think that it's because fic tells stories about characters to whom readers already have a fierce emotional attachment.

I think you're right about the emotional attachment. But the other thing is, commercial novels do give you cues about what's inside, even leaving aside the usual description on the cover. Genre, cover art, etc., all let you come into a novel with some idea of what you'll find inside. With fic, OTOH, a completely unlabeled story where all you get is a title and link is a lot blanker.