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.

I like warnings on things like nonconsensual sex and torture and things like that, because I run across too many stories that lovingly describe extreme degredation and mutilation and such, and I don't want that stuff in my head, sorry. Don't tell me somebody dies, because I can generally guess which way a story's going anyway. I like knowing about extremes, but the rating will--or should--generally give someone an idea of what kind of stuff they're likely to run into. If something's rated R, odds are they're not out on a lovely sunny afternoon having a picnic where the most angsty thing going on is a hotly contested Frisbee game.

Connie N. has a point, in re warnings for specific things that are non-mainstream elements. Generally, I'm keyword-free -- I've become more radical in this regard as I've gone along -- but boy, it sucks to open a story during down time at work and then realize it involves rape and torture. I might read the story at home, but not at work.

My solution historically to solve problems like this is to use HBO detailed ratings. (You know, that you see before the movie starts.) R -- for violence, scariness, bad language, and sexuality. NC-17 -- for gore (I have done this only once). It establishes reasonable boundaries of expectation, without giving anything away; and I would expect to see rape/noncon in that list (in fact, HBO does warn for that!) but nothing as specific as character death. And I wish other people would do the HBO thing! Not many do.

I mostly filter what I read, now, by reading only what others have recommended. When I was reading "raw feed" though -- off usenet --, I certainly filtered by judging whether, as shown in the headers, the author trusted me to read as an intelligent adult. Part of that trusting involved me not feeling like I'd already read the story, before I'd started reading the story.

(I suspect my stance got radicalized when people started "warning" for non-OTP. Like, I have read stories where the pairing was irrelevant due to plot choices, where authors have warned that there was no salient pairing. This drives me bananas, because I never warn people that I do not drive a tank. I just show up, not driving a tank, and assume people will clue in and live with it.)

(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.)

It's not true. On the SENAD list, which was the major list at the time for Sentinel discussion (might still be, hell if I know), someone requested that people warn about haircutting. She was pretty well immediately mocked, but she was apparently serious. It was never a required warning, though.

Oh, good. That makes me feel better.

Too funny. It's, umm. Hurt/Comfort. No. Really.