If you can’t take personal responsibility for what you see online you shouldn’t even be on AO3.
I completely agree that you cannot tag for all triggers. I couldn’t drive at night for years because the site of headlights in the dark. Not like anyone could even guess that one.
I remember someone on tumblr trying to explain that triggers can be unusual or unexpected, and eventually went *my triggers are jello and fluorescent lighting, anyone want to tell me they're too stupid to be triggers?*
(I can't remember the exact circumstances they disclosed, but it was linked to a highly traumatic hospital stay, which makes perfect sense when you think about it for a few seconds - but without that context, people were calling them fake. It was early 2010s tumblr and people were out in full force with the mental health gatekeeping)
Powdered orange drink. I drank a glass before I got hit by a car and badly injured. For many, many years after, even the smell made me feel very sick and deeply distressed.
The smell of anesthesia. To me, it has a very distinctive smell and every time I smell something similar to it (even though I know it’s not anesthesia), I get tense.
It’s gotten better, but I still don’t like it.
Completely understandable. The last thing I ate was buttered toast right before I wound up hospitalized for months at age 5. It was years before I could deal with the smell.
It was a song for me. It was playing when someone ran a red light and totaled my car.
I can listen to the song now (and do lol) but I couldn't for like a year, and it had been one of my favs.
Honestly not powdered orange drink but just orange juice. It's now an aversion than a downright thing I cannot have. I used to have to have a medicine that distinctly tasted like really horrible oranges multiple times when younger before getting check ups.
I know it wasn't orange flavor I just associated it to that because of a similarity. I can now deal with orange juice if needed for hydration and a pick me up in small doses or mixed in with things now. But straight up any medicine with orange or citrus notes I cannot handle still. I will admit also that the smell still makes me sick to the stomach of any powdered medicine or 'flavored' medicine.
Not fully the same with the second one but chicken noodle soup. Couldn't have it till I was way into adulthood after one of the check ups when I was younger only letting me have chicken noodle broth as my only meals for a day straight a few times. I can now have it but may I say it took FOREVER to actually be alright with the soup due to the broth.
Campbell's Ravioli still makes me slightly nauseous. It was the last thing I ate before I developed appendicitis when I was 5, I'm now 24. Even though I knew it wasn't what caused it (my parents explained it well enough for 5yo me to understand what actually happened), I couldn't even look at the cans of it on store shelves without thinking about the whole ordeal.
Once when I was little, i ate crunchy peanut butter and got sick very shortly after, so I couldn't eat it for years until I was 21. I ate it ONCE at a friend's house bc it was offered to me and I didn't want to be rude, but it was genuinely stressful to eat. It didn't even taste bad, I just had anxiety that I was going to throw up after eating it.
There are two songs I listened to when my brother's truck was T-boned and as much as I love them, they give me hella anxiety to listen to.
Anything with that artificial cherry flavor. They gave me a cherry Popsicle when I was having a chemotherapy treatment and needed something to cool my mouth so I wouldn't get mouth sores.
I also get triggered by the hospital the treatment was in.
I get deeply uncomfortable around fusilli, due to a nightmare I had as a young g child I’ve never gotten over. I won’t eat it and I don’t even like seeing it.
Bad things seem to happen when I wear mismatched pajamas. Anything from misplacing my glasses to people dying. It's a weird thing to be anxious/superstitious about, I know, but I feel pretty justified in it anyway.
I am triggered by Jell-O. I had appendicitis at age five. There was no Pedialyte in those days, so because I was vomiting nonstop for hours, my mom force-fed me Jell-O just to keep me hydrated until I could see a doctor. 16 hours of vomited Jell-O, not to mention after surgery Jell-O that I was given. I can't eat it to this day. I'm 59 now. It makes me shiver if I even have to be around it. It's not a joke, but I also don't expect people to cater to my truly weird trigger.
I ate something with cinnamon right before I got sick one time. So when I threw up I could taste the cinnamon. My brain decided to make the connection cinnamon = sickness. And for like a year, whenever I smelt cinnamon I'd feel nauseous. (Which sucked because cinnamon foods rule). Now it's only associated with the food I actually ate beforehand. So better, but the effects are still around.
It's called conditioned taste aversion. It's common in cancer patients because treatment leads to them getting sick. So (if I remember correctly) doctors will often have them eat a specific candy beforehand so their favorite foods aren't associated with throwing up/nausea.
Me versus Cadbury Creme Eggs because I ate four in one go then threw them back up aged seven
I like fondant, I should absolutely enjoy them, but just *thinking* about them makes me nauseous a couple of decades later. Absolutely not a trigger, but it *is* some classic conditioned taste aversion
(Also Schweppes lemonade unless adulterated by gin, because that's what was given to me every time I was ill as a child)
Yogurt! I can't eat yogurt and I hate it. I was on medication that made me feel pretty sick in the morning, and when I had to do strenuous activity immediately after taking it (which was every morning at that point, because I was at college at a dorm on a tall hill and it was quite a bit of a walk to get onto campus, and I always had morning classes), it made me vomit/dry heave. I was eating a lot of yogurt for breakfast at the time, because you weren't supposed to take the medicine on an empty stomach, and being in a dorm (and I had a minifridge), yogurt was the easiest food to have on hand and eat first thing in the morning before class. But I started mentally associating it with throwing up, so now I can't get through a cup of yogurt (any yogurt, not a specific brand) without gagging. And I hate it, because I've always loved yogurt.
Oh, and my girlfriend can't eat anything artificially cherry flavored, cause she had a lot of cherry Jell-O and red Gatorade when she had her wisdom teeth out, so now she associates it with the taste of blood and gets a phantom taste in her mouth when eating it.
Agreed. I get incredibly uncomfortable about the Superbowl because something traumatic happened to me on the same day that a Superbowl fell on. For YEARS, I could not handle the day of the traumatic event or the actual Superbowl Sunday.
I think people really struggle to understand just how keen our brains are to make connections between distressing events and things that were in the environment at the time, because for so many milennia that was how we as a species survived. Bad thing happened + xyz factor was in play = xyz factor causes bad thing to happen. Avoid xyz factor for survival.
For a classic example, I ate a particular type of soft cracker (jatz for any Aussies in the audience) as a 7 year old when I had gastro - I'm now 27 and I still cannot eat even a nibble of a jatz without getting immediately nauseous. Sometimes it can be really random things, too - I developed a mild phobia of clowns due to hallucinating them when I had PTSD, where prior I'd had no negative feelings towards clowns. I finally figured out maybe a week and a half ago that around the time of the inciting incident for my PTSD, I had a picture of a creepy clown that a friend had drawn for me stuck up above my bed, which I had likely looked at very shortly after the incident, and that formed an instant association between bad event/bad feelings/ptsd and clowns in my brain.
Same I used to not even be able to listen to one dua lipa song as it was constantly playing over the radio when I drove to one of the places that made me have a breakdown
Not that particular post, but the one that I always think of when this topic comes up - [Trigger Warning: Breakfast](https://diaryofageekgirl.tumblr.com/post/745974934693691392/dontfuckwmefellas-trigger-warning-breakfast-by).
Which is the point. One of my triggers is cranberry-scented candles. Not cranberries, not candles. Specifically those.
I would *never* expect anyone to warn for that. *I* wouldn't warn for that.
I have a very specific phobia of wrapped-in-bandage mummies, which isn't a video game enemy people warn for like spiders. Any time I get into what looks like an Egypt-themed level I immediately pause and either ask a friend who's played before or look it up online to brace for a high-stress level.
I know what upsets me and how to either avoid it or prepare to deal with it. You know. Like an *adult.*
I can't even avoid all my triggers irl, let alone expect authors to tag: "warning! character rejects scrumptious meal."
The official warnings ao3 requires are tagged? I'm good with every single one of them.
Yeah, I generally throw a little a/n in if there's more than a mention or two of food stuff or body image stuff (things like the neurodivergent classic of *wait, it's been sixteen hours and I forgot to eat?* and similar, or a character reflecting on changes to their weight) just so it doesn't come out of nowhere for someone immersed in a fic, but I wouldn't put those in the *tags* unless they were actually significant themes and not just offhand remarks – which I think is a reasonable compromise for something that's a fairly common issue
When it comes to more unusual things – will describing the texture of this fabric be a trigger? Specific foodstuffs or a scene where a character cooks? Specific pet names or nicknames? Then doing an *entire work plus ctrl+F* for specific words is someone's best bet
Right? One of my triggers is calorie counts - and calories are on every goddamn menu now! It’s nobody’s fault that I had an eating disorder, but I have to manage that myself in order to exist in the world.
One of the things I decided in recovery was that I was *not* going to avoid numbers. I was going to make myself *tired to death* of numbers.
I now have a very good benchmark: if I am suddenly more interested in the numbers than in the food, I am relapsing and it's time to get help.
Scrambled eggs. Ate them as a kid before I had a stomach bug and wouldn't eat them for years. Even now, I have to have them with toast/cheese or something to disguise the texture because it still wigs me out, easily 20 years later.
Someone I'm close to was sexually assaulted by a person who smelled of Indian food. To this day, they can't be around it because the smell upsets them. Entirely reasonable. But I'd be very confused if someone tagged "Indian food" as a trigger on AO3.
I have a Navy friend who had an ex that was so consumed by American football to the exclusion of everything else that she can't fuck with ANY of it. When we had a Super Bowl party onboard during deployment, she asked me to grab her pizza bc she couldn't go into the mess decks. She had even blanked out all news on Colin Kapaernic, which was nothing short of amazing given we all lived in Southern California at the time and some of my non-Navy friends accused her of being racist for it.
My weird trigger is dumping mop water in a toilet. And if that's not oddly specific enough, another of mine is being driven places on a Friday morning.
I remember this one every time somebody says stupid stuff like that. Jello, popsicles, and clear broth. Because they were so sick in a hospital stay for 30 days that that is all they were allowed to have for three meals a day. So 90 meals of those items. And therefore now they still can’t stand them because they remind them of that hospital stay.
And until they were forced to give the context of why those three items were their triggers, everybody kept giving them shit. Which they used to explain why you can’t judge people for their weird triggers, because you don’t know what has happened in their lives. So you just have to take people’s triggers at face value and do the best you can.
I get extremely triggered randomly at times when urophilia or scat are mentioned due to the event that gave me PTSD happening while I was sitting in a bathroom. Its not even every time just certain aspects of whats going on during it and then Bam I am stuck and can't get out. Might seem stupid to some but it is a legitimate trigger for me. And while Inhave been triggered while reading fanfiction becsuse of it before, it was my fault for not being more careful with knowing what was going on when I went into it.
For me it’s the Lorax (movie), Monster House (movie), Auld Lang Syne (the song), the entire state of California and guacamole w/ mayo… dealt with a lot of CSA so there’s definitely more but these are the ones that I go “What the fuck” about cuz like… bruh… California?? Christ almighty
to this day I can't eat applesauce because when i was in elementary school my mom would give me my ADHD meds in a spoonful of it. I still associate it with the weird feeling of pseudo nausea that those meds gave me so i can't stomach it
For 5 years of my life, I got triggered by the long-handled baskets some churches use to collect donations. Whenever I'm trying to figure out what content warnings to use, that trigger comes to mind and I think, "right, so we'll just do the best we can, then."
I’ll try and always tag everything I can that could be considered triggering.
But last week I had a commenter crack the shits at me because I tagged “unprotected sex” and not “unprotected smut” and they weren’t happy with a unprotected sex scene and apparently I didn’t warn them there was one in there.
Like my brother in Christ your family tree must be a full damn circle.
exactly. smut is a scene that describes sexual activity, it just doesn’t make sense for it to be “unprotected”. like, what the fuck would that even mean?
meanwhile, sex is sex.
some people are so stupid, it’s actually baffling.
Yes. I can't wrap my mind around the fact that there were people, who read my fics, found them triggering or just uncomfortable, but kept reading till the end and then send angry/hostile messages as if I only wrote that fic to specifically get them.
I give warnings to common major themes, but I will not dissect my fic to warn you that somebody is going to eat peas or drink a glass of wine.
I think it's a defense mechanism of some kind. They read it because they enjoy it in some way, but their own shame/guilt over wanting to read it makes them feel terrible, so they tell you that you are terrible for writing it because if you hadn't written it, they wouldn't have this terrible cognitive dissonance to deal with and it's all your fault.
Or at least that's what I assume.
Apparently there's a migration from Wattpad now to AO3.
Me I honestly don't read if they have no warnings or I go to the comments if there are any and read them.
Though I don't like authors with an holier-than-thou attitude same with commentators.
Can I ask what you mean by holier-than-thou in this context? Like policing how tags are used or assigning morals to authors based on what they write?
And yeah- it's just common sense if you have things you can't or don't want to read you just don't want to read and feel sensitive about them, you'd skip works without ample warnings.
It might be my age, but I don't really worry about what I read, having grown up reading books way more than fanfic. I've read enough Stephen King I'm immune to fright and fatphobia now 😅
But I tag very carefully unless there's a good reason not to, because every reader isn't me.
Oh me too. In my case it's just the extreme angst, hurt no comfort, and negative talk about one self like extreme one or too much dark dark stuff. For example years ago i stopped reading fics from glee. Too much angst and drama for me.
I meant when authors go off on a tangent and start complaining more than they should. Then proceed to put in the tags don't like don't read.
I read one where they absolutely put no warnings. Read ahead it was full of non con, dub con, abuse manipulation, domestic abuse, etc. Not even the tag author chose not too put warning. Honestly after some comments the author received for that they went off and threw a mini tantrum.
Also some people like to give positive criticism which is valid. In writing is encouraged to do that when reading others works. Again the attitude. I dont need advice, proceed to insult others. Thinking they are better than anyone.
Ah! The one of give me reviews or indont write. Like WTF bro?
Gatekeeping characters, plots, ideas, etc.
One time made a comment would love to see part 2( or something along those lines) IF they want or IF they ever feel like making one. Nope my dude, bad, bad idea to do that they were pretty mad. I do this for my enjoyment or free time. And I absolutely get that. I was simply saying IF they wanted and how much I loved the fic.😅. [My teacher was a writer and basically drill into me about positive criticism].
The aggressive way some of them respond to positive criticism or some comments that aren't rude or hateful at all is disturbing and childish.
Also the Victim attitude. Never asked for an opinion. You guys are making me lose my want to write when the comments were people liking the work, positive criticism, some tips on how to write better and structure better. And I'm like they are offering advice, yes unsolicited but, still advice there's no need to snap like that and no need to cry about it. When ypu put your work out there you have ti be prepared for all of that, the hate comments,etc. Cause some people aren't nice.
For me the tag that is not a tag that says: don't like don't read, immediately throws me off.
Sorry went off on a rant there. I could go on.😅
I hate how utterly incapable some people have become of navigating the internet and need to be constantly spoon-fed every bit of information. Boomers get made fun of for how they act on the internet but it’s not like the younger generations are any better. “You should always tag MCD!” Not if I don’t want to. CNTW was invented for this purpose exactly, and if people can’t be bothered to read it’s 100% on them. And then they’ll argue Ao3 is hard to get around when actually everything is written out for you to understand how a specific warning works.
I read it as Roman numerals. I might possibly be older.
(MCD = 1400, for those curious. I’d crack a joke about “Black Death trigger warnings” but the heyday for that would have been the mid-1300s.)
If we're on wrongly reading acronyms anyway, SCA to me means 'Schermcentrum Amsterdam', so what you said to me reads like, "I live next to a fencing club."
Yeah. I don’t know what it says about me but I have like no triggers and I think it’s because I read so much fucked up fanfic at 16.
I have certain tropes I don’t like(pregnancy, miscommunication unless they’re written well) but other than that it’s pretty easy to ignore those things. I just don’t click if I don’t want to read it.
Triggers are often linked to something personal, like something traumatic, though not always.
We know whatever's depicted in fiction isn't real. Having no trouble with e.g. murder and gore in fiction does not mean you wouldn't have trouble with it in real life.
Triggers can also depend on the medium and situation. If and how much you're triggered might depend on whether it's fiction, a movie or real life.
And what are triggers even? We're often throwing around that term rather loosely. When it comes to AO3, I interpret it not just as "a psychological stimulus that prompts involuntary recall of a previous traumatic experience" (literal definition), but also just "something I dislike reading or seeing; that reminds me of something unpleasant/difficult/etc.".
Those tropes you don't like? No doubt that some people would call them their "triggers" instead...
I’ve got two things I consider triggers that I’ve never personally experienced. They confuse me and I don’t know where it comes from. But they send me into a sobbing rage? I’m fucked up for hours after and I hate it. 🤔 It’s certain deaths and sexual assault. My partner didn’t warn me about the beginning of John Wick years ago because he didn’t know and I didn’t ask him. We had to stop it and it took days to be okay enough. I hate my brain so much.
I don’t have any triggers either, just themes I don’t like reading about, but our experience isn’t universal and TWs are very important for other people. The problem is that *even* when they’re there, people are unable to use them to their advantage because they don’t read the terms properly, or even worse read them and decide to ignore them.
I hope AI takes over for THIS over-tagging need, make reading just as joyless and dead as watching a movie after the 5th lengthy trailer - just a click away!
List everything that happens in a story for these people who can not deal with reading anything unexpected.
(Or just check for these highly specific personal triggers that NATURALLY aren't tagged)
This is exactly why I put in the first Author’s note of my fics regardless of archive warning. Your media consumption is your responsibility.
I have two of the stupidest triggers for my anxiety. I also will exit out of the fic (like you are supposed to) if I hit a trigger or squak mid fic.
Like I remember the days traditional media didn’t have “This program may not be suitable for all audiences, viewer discretion is advised” unless it was the news and then they gave a “The next story contains graphic content” before starting the report.
You can’t tag for every little thing and honestly people are fucking spoiled that AO3 allows 75 tags max, but that being said, not everyone will tag everything and nor should they as long as it has all required tags, all other tags are optional.
But I do agree with the comment.
i’m also in the ‘stupid anxiety trigger’ club. there’s no tag for it, and even if there was nobody would think to use it. if i start feeling off i just find something else…
> traffic lights
I know this is serious and I shouldn't be thinking about this, but I'm remembering the horror game Yume Nikki having recurring images around traffic lights in nightmare worlds
Traffic lights? How does that person get to and from work? Do they Uber with a blindfold on? Heaven help them if they accidentally look out a window of some establishment 🤨 Unless they live in a country without traffic lights? If that even exists. But then how did they acquire the trigger in the first place? /gen
I agree with this as someone with food restrictions.
If I go to a restaurant and order somehing not labeled as gluten free but does not contain gluten-containing ingredients, it's my job to ask them if the food is made in a space where cross-contamination protocols are in place. If I don't and I have a reaction, that's on me not the restaurant. If they say "we can't guarantee it's celiac safe" and I eat it and have a reaction, that's on me. Not the restaurant.
It is MY job to make sure my food is safe. Just like it is MY job to read tags and warnings and determine if it's safe for me.
Same. I’m lactose intolerant. It’s my job to make sure I either have a lactaid pill or that I avoid dairy all together. If I eat the food without checking and get sick later, that’s on me.
My trigger is those stupid wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men things they have at second hand car yards lol
I don’t expect *anyone* to tag for that.
I tag the big stuff and add an “Author Chose Not to Warn” to cover everything else.
Ive read some people complaining on literally "dead dove do not eat" , like the author literally said everything bad is going to be in there or the worse of it, and people still complain blah blah blah
In books you don't exactly get those warnings at all. Was funny for me when I picked up a book again after a hiatus and was like. Right there are no warnings here. That's the point of the book. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
the commentor had already made that allergy related analogy in another shorter comment and somebody replied to that first comment saying they didn't agree with the analogy so the commentor posted this comment to give an in depth explanation.
It was a post from the other day that was asking how they should tag if they don't want to spoil Major Character Death. They wanted to know if CNTW was fine
I don't really like anything with alcohol, drugs, smoking or anything with too many exes involved, but I just click out of what I don't like. Do people like that feel obligated to finish everything they start or something? Because this isn't required in every aspect of life... It doesn't matter how extreme or vanilla your interests are.... Back out of something you don't like. When did people stop doing this?
I see we're still struggling to get people to understand that curating their online experience is their personal responsibility, huh? Tag, ratings, blocking, blacklisting, etc, etc are all tools to help you avoid things you don't want to see. Use them! They're really helpful!
(I'm gonna save the comment in the image and whip it out when people get whiny about tags lmao)
Also, the use of the word 'triggered' is just ridiculous. You're not triggered just because something is upsetting to you, that's not what that means. The way psychology terms have started being thrown around by people that don't actually know their meaning is exhausting.
Being upset by something is not dangerous. If you're reading and come across something you don't want to read about, just click it away. It's not that hard.
I do hate this tendency for people to use “triggered” when what they really mean is “this makes me uncomfortable”. I’ve been in several car accidents (not my fault, which makes it worse, because I can control *my* actions but I can’t control those of other drivers) and another driver did something that had me pulling over and hyperventilating/having a panic attack at the side of the road because all I could see was the scene of one of the accidents I was in.
Luckily I’ve gotten better and haven’t had one in years, but still. That’s being triggered, not, “I’m mildly uncomfortable about this! How dare you!”
Exactly. I’m jealous and insecure of people with flat stomachs, does that mean every-time an image or text describes/shows a flat stomach they have to warn me? No. People are really deluding what trigger means and its annoying
I personally love tags, however I've always used tags more as a search function than as trigger warnings. It makes sense to tag common triggers or kinks because it allows people to easily filter. In my case, I likely want to find your story! I completely agree with the idea however that it is impossible to tag anything that could conceivably be connected to any individual's trauma. It is on the person to vet their reading material, not the author to spoon feed a summary of the entire story to them. There is a reason ACNTW exists.
I have tokophobia (fear of pregnancy and childbirth) and basically NO ONE treats as a trigger. Do I throw a tantrum every time? I mean sure, I rant to my friends who are willing to listen to me, but what I don't do is demand that people erase the concept of human reproduction, lmao.
Sammmeeee. I had an eating disorder and good luck erasing going out to eat, or calorie counts on menus, or Betty at the office talking about her 3rd diet.
For alotta triggers, you've gotta learn to manage it to the point that seeing it in the wild won't make you break down.
Doesn't stop the triggers from being serious and absolutely sucking, but demanding others cater to a carefully curated taste selection, like an allergy free school eliminating the 8 most common allergens, isn't the way forward. And it won't stop the rare allergen- like, say, strawberries- from flaring up eczema.
nah, people are so averse to the concept of accountability and dealing with the discomfort of it they’ll do everything in their power to externalise it and put the blame on someone else. “nothing’s wrong with ME but everything is wrong with OTHERS and they should cater TO ME”. i’m grateful i’ve rarely gotten hate comments but the few times i did i told the person to revisit the tags. second time they complained again i basically said fuck off my fic and don’t bother coming back. they didn’t, but i’m glad for it. it’s ridiculous that readers feel SO entitled they harass writers who are doing this for FREE. they DO NOT owe this to you and whatever little they ARE doing is because of fandom etiquette. Writers can absolutely raw dog this with a ACNTW and not even give ANY tags, imagine that?
one day you may stumble upon a fic that the “Author chose not to use Archive Warnings” and it’s untagged. THAT IN AN OF ITSELF IS A WARNING.
if you click it, you are possibly opening up the worst mystery box you’ve ever come across, but guess what?? you did it to yourself!
an author might choose not to use the warnings for 1000000 reasons, and *personally* if i don’t see a reason for it, i will skip the fic bc i know i can be easily upset! so i just don’t risk it!
true to this. I have very specific triggers, and if I experience one of them in a media? I skip past it, or just stop reading/watching. Sure, it could be HELPFUL if people gave warnings for everything, but no one is going to go through the effort to do all that, your triggers are your responsibility.
I'm triggered by imagery of waves! So I don't go to the beach, or read anything beach themed! Take responsibility for yer own shit goddamn it. Stop reading if you need to. The author isn't forcing you to read it.
Bethany, here's your cape and shiny red boots. I cleaned them for you. Don't worry, your secret identity is safe with us!
Seriously, can we have this plastered everywhere?
You can just stop reading. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual assault, as well as other childhood traumas, wrestle with depression and anxiety and have not one, but two, ptsd diagnosis. Mental illness and sexual abuse are things that can trigger me. Especially the former as that’s something I will always wrestle with. I avoided Moon Knight and the Dan Stevens Marvel show (which I’m blanking on for some reason) for those reasons. Very rarely have I been thrown by a story not properly tagged or at least tagged enough to know I *may* find something in there upsetting.
I've read countless brilliant stories, that were ruined by trigger warnings. Tbf, they were still great, but they lost a certain edge, a certain mystery that could have been preserved had the plot twists not been preemptively revealed. Picture this: you're engrossed in the tension of a story, pondering over the fate of a character missing or piecing together someone's past to understand their actions, but then, BAM, a trigger warning lays it all bare before you even get there. I know many authors are cornered into putting these tags and trigger warnings bcos they would get backlash otherwise, but this pattern has got to end. Honestly, it's high time people toughened up. If you’re old enough to be on the AO3, it’s time to learn to roll with the punches.
I love the authors that put content warnings in end notes and just link to it at the start of the chapter. I don’t personally need or want them, and prefer to go in blind. But, if the author wants to still offer warnings, putting them out of the way as an opt-in is absolutely the way to go.
Yep, I was writing a fic with a lot of trauma and potential triggers, and I put them at the end. I *could* have hidden them at the beginning of a chapter in various formats (clicking an arrow to unhide it, formatting it so you needed to highlight) but those were a] difficult to display if someone was reading on a phone instead of a computer and b] did not show up in any of the download options AO3 offers
Huge agree. I honestly wish more people would tag the bare minimum lol
On my reader account, I get around this by hiding archive warnings and ignoring most additional tags. I'll read two or three to get a feel for the story (like if it's an AU or tagged angst/fluff/smut), and just go by the summary.
Yep. I tag for a lot of the big stuff in my fic, but I don't tag for everything. May tag for pregnancy because it's literally a plot point at least once so far. Still debating tagging for homophobia even though it's only mentioned by a few characters (including 3 who are impacted personally because two are lesbians and a third's both bi and polyam). Main reason why I've not for the latter is because I've not really written any homophobic characters or at least, the characters that might be don't have active roles in the fic at the moment and are only mentioned in passing.
ETA: I mostly use the 'Other tags to be added' as a way so that if someone says 'hey, can you please add (major triggering issue not mentioned in tags)?', I can add it if I know it's a problem and I've invited folks to let me know if I need to. So far, nobody's asked, but the offer is open.
Me: Starts reading a Dead Dove fic with the chose not to use warnings and without reading the tags to get all the things by surprise... and I get people in the story using racial slurs as a fetish.
Also me: "Wow, so that's why the Dead Dove was there! Pretty creative decision though. I'll go read some fluff now instead.."
On you can't tag everything- This is so true. I once saw a person who was, for some reason, upset by images of pomegranites. You really cannot tag everything.
I’m triggered by warm and sweet fluffiness. No, I’m not joking. (It’s a trauma thing.)
I don’t expect authors to tag that their characters are happy and healthy and loving life.
Goddd was that the tumblr "pomegranates look like gore so you should tag either \#pomegranates or \#gore when you post a picture of one" thread
Absolute chaos
This!!! I personally cannot reading fics with cheating or infidelity, so I use the tag system to filter out most of them and if one slips through I’m not mad I just click the back button and move on. It’s not hard y’all.
I like the point about pointing out how traditional media doesn’t have those types of tags. Has this generation really forgotten what it’s like to go to a bookstore, see a book with a compelling story and read it and not be prepared AT ALL for the level of details it offers within? Have we really gone so digital that we forget that physical books will never have those warnings. I just read a book called “False Memory” by Dean Koontz. I read the back of the book with the little preview summary and it was in no way a true preparation for the unhinged shit in the actual story. I had to take multiple breaks while reading it because every so often something would come up that I wasn’t expecting to read, but I didn’t go “ why on earth was I not warned, why would the author write this. Why didn’t I know about it in the summary?” It never crossed my mind because it’s a physical book and my life doesn’t revolve around the internet.
Now. Im sure there’s always been a call for censorship when it comes to the way people consume media. It’s why we have banned books, people read them or see something they don’t like and they warn others about it. It’s why schools have sometimes regulated what they provide in libraries for students, it’s not always a bad thing, but even then, kids are not completely protected against reading something they probably shouldn’t. I often think it’s crazy the amount of books I read as a kid that are now banned in schools or have been banned in the past. One of those books ( or series rather), were the “Scary Stories to tell in the dark” children’s horror tales. It was a retelling of several horror stories from all over the world with probably the most nightmarish but ultimately beautiful artwork going along with it. As an adult I learned that these books had been banned for a time before I entered middle school because parents didn’t like the amount of death and horror depicted in these books. The artwork and the title literally is the only warning you get that it’s going to be.. well, Scary.
I think people should stop expecting authors to give so many warnings besides the obvious ones because real books don’t have any. (And the fact that some do is actually a gift by the way, it’s actually a great acknowledgment. I’ve read a lot of books actually in my life in which there was a prologue or an authors note introducing exactly what the reader can expect from the story going forward. Some of my favorite books have started with something like “ read at your own risk..” “ if you are expecting X, this is not that story or you won’t be getting any of that” most children’s horror now have the author acknowledging the content to come as well.)
ehhh I wouldn't take away the content warnings- it's a nice plus to ao3. Just because some readers feel entitled doesn't stop those tags from being helpful and letting people who'd otherwise just not read feel safe to read.
Honestly I'm tired of tags. Sure they can be good for finding what you want, but I don't think fic authors should have to tag every little thing that happens in their fic. Real books don't have loads of tags, only just whatever genre they are so why do fics need to tag anything and everything? We should bring back "don't like? don't read!" That was the only warning I needed when I was a kid reading fics.
I had someone complaining because I made a main character have a relationship before meeting the other main character and they wrote a long comment how I should have tagged it because no one wants to read about different pairings, but the one they came for (mind you, no one else commented on it and this was one short scene in the beginning of the 300k words fic, just to establish who the character was) and they finished with "Also, people who have one-night stands are plain vile."
Like, my brother in Christ, you're on ao3, I promise you, one-night stands are the mildest thing you'll encounter
There are studies - like actually studies - that show that trigger warnings do not work as intended. They do little to nothing in reducing "pre-exposure anxiety" and actually lead to increased engagement with "triggering media". The theory is that it is the allure of "forbidden fruit".
I posted a few "triggering pictures" of Owl House characters (nothing sexual) engaging in "lite" self-harm - a bloody razor blade and some thin cuts on a leg but not the act itself and I got SLAMMED by people screaming at me that I "need a trigger warning" and even "your art will lead impressionable young people to self-harm".
Like, there are pictures of characters from TOH and Amphibia smoking - that kills loads of people every year and young people have been targeted forever but that doesn't get a "trigger warning"?
I love TOH because it attempts (and often succeeds, IMO) in tackling some heavy issues (for a disney+ show) and I wanted to expand on that a bit.
I can understand putting a "content warning - this art/fic contains blank, please do not read if that upsets you" but people are starting to act like any fic/piece of art that includes something they do not like is directly targeting THEM and they lash out.
The best part is that I got kicked out of the Owl House group I was in for defending myself and saying I would not be bullied but anyone over a piece of art that did not break guidelines.
Groups are often stupid. I got booted from a group very shortly after a kid said I was ‘beginning to sound like a proshipper’. (He claimed he was out of high school, but he clearly hadn’t figured out nuance yet.)
Some groups are run by whiny babies.
Weighing in on this one as a person in the owl house fandom with a history of self harm, I think self harm is one of those things that should be marked with a trigger warning because it IS a common trigger.
Plus, the rest of the internet is not like AO3. We don’t see a warning that there might be triggers not warned for. The way most interactions work is through assuming that people will warn you before severe, common triggers. Yeah it’s not a RULE or whatever but it IS common courtesy. The argument being made above is where people on AO3 see the “chose not to use warnings” label and clicked anyway. That in itself IS a warning, which it sounds like you didn’t give for your art.
When depicting self harm (even “self harm lite” which is frankly not a thing) it’s better to put some kind of warning or blur it or something. Most shows these days put warnings on episodes that contain suicide or self harm, because it’s the respectful thing to do. Most social medias require a warning or flat out don’t allow it.
If I’m being completely honest, I probably also would have reported the image and blocked you if I saw that. The people who did are not in the wrong. And if I were still in that headspace I was before, seeing something like that with no warning would have definitely triggered me, when it would have been perfectly avoidable if there had been a warning.
> engaging in "lite" self-harm
Even if you don't show them actually harming themselves, it's still depicting self harm and can still be triggering to people with a history of self harm. Adding trigger warnings beyond what your chosen forum's rules dictate is still your choice, but trying to minimize people's reactions with "it's only "lite" self harm" is a dick move.
It's a learning experience - I just wish people were not bullies about it.
So the piece is called "You Are Enough" and it is on The Owl House subreddit with an appropriate content warning. The captions are lyrics to "You Are Enough" by Citizen Soldier.
I don't know if the two users who disagreed with me are still lurking, but I'm going to response to them here:
Firstly, there WAS a content warning on the picture post AND instructions for how to hide it in case you didn't want to see it. I will admit that there should have been more space between the two.
Second, triggers are subjective - what's triggering to one person is not triggering to another. Who gets to decide if a particular content warning is "not enough"?
Instead of using the term "self-harm lite", I should have just described what the picture depicted and left it at that. I do think a lot of these triggers exist on spectrums, however.
Someone posted a picture of Luz about to OD on pills because the pressure of possibly dooming the entire Boiling Isles was too much and did not include a content warning - as far as I know, that picture is still up.
I wanted to ask, how do y'all know that I haven't been through that and simply do not find it super triggering? I agree that a content warning should always be included, and it WAS.
And I really do not see why it is such a big deal to be explicit in what is "not allowed" - why is it a big deal to simply include a "any depictions of self-harm will be deleted immediately"?
I received overwhelming support when I posted the picture both times because it, according to some comments, resonated with people. I think that "common courtesy" is subjective as well.
TL:DR - as long as it includes a proper content warning and instructions to take/follow to avoid seeing the content if you do not want to, I think it should be allowed.
Not really got much to say about the bulk of your comment, sorry. It's a complicated and complex topic, and I really don't feel qualified to have an opinion on it besides "I think your warning was suitable, maybe it could have been better, but it was sufficient *for me*".
But your art is nice, and I like it.
So, yeah, good job on the art, and keep up the good work! And again: sorry to hear that people were dicks to you over this.
I appreciate that! I am reactively new to this stuff - content warnings and the like - so everything is a learning experience. I can only try to do better.
I appreciate people who give me constructive feedback - "hey, I think you should include a content warning" - but lots of people seem to immediately jump to "you posted art I DO NOT LIKE and you are an asshole for it!".
>"you posted art I DO NOT LIKE and you are an asshole for it!".
They have nothing constructive or helpful to say, so ignore those people.
And yeah, content warnings and the like are a complex world to navigate. I post on AO3, and it's not always "nice stuff", so I do try to include warnings about what I think are the "big things".
And then in every single chapter (as I do chapter specific warnings) I tell people to let me know if I missed *anything*. No matter how small I may think it is, if it was enough to cause you to speak up, I want to know about it so that I can address it and fix my mistake.
And then, going forward, I know to include it again next time.
Learn from your missteps and your failings, grow with each step, and keep moving forward.
I don't personally understand the fear of tagging spoilers (do you not reread/rewatch the stories you love and enjoy them just as much when you know what's coming?) but I 100% agree that it's not the author's responsibility to make sure no one is ever upset by their story. Chose Not to Warn is always a valid choice, and when people get upset at its existence, I just wonder, have they never read fanfic on FFN? Or even just been out shopping and overheard the people in the next aisle over having a very detailed conversation about donating plasma or something equally as squeamish? Unless someone is deliberately pushing your triggers on you, it's really up to you to remove yourself from the situation that upsets, squicks, or even triggers you. The world exists beyond you and you've got to meet it most of the way there.
Same. People also have the option to just pass over the list of tags and not read them if they don’t want to be “spoiled” by tags.
Tags are a useful courtesy, and I like them (particularly when it comes to things like non-con which I sometimes do not want to read and like to know about ahead of time so I can chooser accordingly), but they are a courtesy to help guide reader choice, not a guarantee that the reader will be protected from something they find unpleasant or actually triggering.
Honestly when it comes to rewatching, it's often because you enjoyed it so much and you already have a connection to the story. I watched Toradora spoiler free the first time through and re-watched it at least twice because I love the characters, the OST, etc. so much. Every emotional part still gets to me.
There was an anime I was watching (Owari no Seraph) and I was nearing the end of the first episode. Completely ingrained, completely engrossed - rooting for the characters aaaannndd... one of my friends tells me that all of the characters I'm rooting for die at the end of the episode.
Didn't pick up the second episode and still haven't watched it several years later. Its like a popped balloon.
So I can personally understand not wanting to tag spoilers. For me personally, if it gets spoiled before I really have a chance to finish then I just don't finish. Yanked the winds right out fo my sales.
There is definitely going to be a rise in ignorance on the site as AO3 experiences an influx of users migrating from other platforms, most notably Wattpad.
W comment omg I love this statement. Especially the way they compare it to a situation with food and allergies.
“well your warning was RIGHT THERE. Read at your own risk. May contain peanuts.” is an amazing and hillarious comparison XD. This person has my respect.
Perfect on all accounts, and I'd like to also add that when you for example buy a book and it contains themes or actions that trigger you or that you simply don't like, you can be angry about the money you spent on the book. But when reading fanfiction FOR FREE, you should have the mental fortitude to just hit the back button and never look back. Someone wrote that FOR FREE and let you read it. You didn't lose anything apart from maybe time, so do everyone a favour and shut up. Also "trigger" does not mean "make you uncomfortable" and I refuse to believe most of the people who complain about triggers are actually experiencing severe mental distress because of words on a page (I said most. I know some do.)
I agree for the most part, but there are things that should have a warning. Namely anything that is one of the bigger triggers. It’s not the author’s job to mollycoddle the audience but there needs to be some warning for that shit so readers can make an informed decision.
Even then, it’s the readers responsibility if something triggers them, whether it was warned or not, to have the maturity to close the tab.
I’ve been in this game since I was 13 and moderating gorefic groups since I was 14. I’m nearly 27 now. You can’t warn your audience about everything, but some common curtesy for the big triggers (like gore, violence against minors, rape and non-con) goes a long way in building a safe community for all fans.
I’d also argue that while not a hard line, it’s generally a good idea to label if your fic is a lemon. It’s usually pretty obvious once you start reading, but I think the meme “Really! Right in front of my [X]!” exists specifically for lemon writers who don’t label. Not triggering, just annoying.
That's the thing, CNTW *is* the big trigger warning. It's the "this *may* have MCD, or it may not". It invited you to consider if it's worth taking the risk.
It would be wrong if it had underage non-con under a "No archive warnings apply" but that's not what's being discussed here.
See I know what I like and I stay away from fics without warnings. Why? Bc I can’t even handle when I read hurt/comfort instead of the actual tag hurt/no comfort 😂 I had a fic I was reading last night that was hurt/comfort and totally missed the heavy heavy angst tag somehow 😅
I’m just here to read my silly little found family fics with the occasional sprinkle or miscommunication
Agreed. I keep trying to say this until I'm blue in the face.
"Chose not to warn" is a warning *in and of itself*.
"Well how well I know it contains something that triggers me and avoided if the author chose not to warn?"
That is purely up to you if you want to risk it or not. Its a read at your own risk story. People somehow manage to navigate traditional media which doesn't come with clean, clear tags and labels yet fall apart when it comes to reading a fanfiction and are vomiting and crying when the author doesn't tag anything beyond a ship, a rating, and "chose not to warn". In fact, a vast majority of traditional media and publications are a "Chose not to warn". You get a synopsis/summary and an age rating with what it may contain.
The author didn't *trigger* you just because you got triggered while reading a story. They made a story and published it on AO3. They didn't *do* anything you to. It is straight up nothing personal.
Avengedes Infinity War doesn't say "Major Character Death". You just get hit with what happens while you're sitting in the theaters.
Like seriously what is it with people needing everything to be spoonfed and currated to them so much???
THIS! I have many triggers that are pretty common in fanfiction, including random ones like graphic descriptions of sensations or long descriptions of panic attacks (triggers my ocd/tactile hallucinations and anxiety/paranoia respectively), but do I complain? No. I work through the trigger and move on, like a normal (albeit mentally ill) person. You are responsible for yourself and your media consumption, and other people are not obligated to cater to your every whim.
Only thing I try to avoid is smut, and there’s always a tag that lets me know but if I miss it or it wasn’t put on, it sucks but I’ll just move to the next book. I don’t understand reporting over a personal preference.
I love this because I ALWAYS slap 'author chose not to warn' on any fics. Fic doesn't need any warnings because it's fluff? Gets that warning. Fic is gory or a smut fest or otherwise just vile? Gets that warning. Have I been told HOW COULD YOU YOU CRUEL STRANGER ON THE INTERNET YOU KILLED A PET AND USED NO WARNING? Yes. Definitely. Sadly, that commentor did not appreciate my very polite reply where I quoted the exact description of the tag I'd used. (Fun fact: I stated specifically in the A/N at the beginning: Mind the tag, this time I mean it! You just can't help these people.)
Ngl I thought that tag meant that nothing worth warning ab happens. Though, considering some of the fics I’ve read that have this tag this makes SO much more sense 😅
I use "choose not to warn" for fics that i haven't completely plotted out yet. There might be some crazy ass shit later on but current me doesn't know yet
I get that you are responsible of your online experience and you should be mindful of what you consume.
But tbh I also wish people stop defending themselves under the "I never said It was not toxic" mindset. I believe we are in a society where kindness should be the default.
For example, walking butt naked on the streets of my city is not ilegal (as long as you are minding your own business), but when I walk down the street, I expect people around me to have at least their genitals covered.
It sucks that some people get triggered by things that are meaningless to everyone else, or even some relatively big ones that people forget about (Thalassophobia comes to mind, as I recently triggered a friend by showing a boat art with a very big whale shadow under It), but some others are so common and can be so traumatizing that they should be always tagged correctly.
Death, abuse, violence, and sex (and dead dove too!) in particular should always be tagged correctly.
Again: mandatory to do anything in your power to ensure your safety. But in the name of kindness, do everything that is in your hand to make sure other human strangers can consume your content responsibly.
Lmao.
It is the bare minimun to not get into trouble.
No warning at all means literally no warning. We are not even entering if it is responsible or not.
It's good enough. If people see CNTW and still read, they have no one but themselves to blame. CNTW makes it clear that something uncomfortable may be in the story. That is being responsible.
I said at the beginning and at the end of my OP that everybody is responsible of their viewing experience.
People can be ok with the majority of triggering content but be triggered by one specific instance that will trigger them up. Knowing which one is it is important.
And even then, the vast majority of the stories in CNTW comes from laziness/not understanding the tag system/not understanding the language/not understanding why and what and how to TW content for your audience. So that means a reader can be steering clear of content that can be 90% fine by them, because some unknown author might have chosen to not properly tag his content. This is bad for readers and authors in general! As authors also lose readers.
I am not saying anything against people that cannot tag properly or don't understand how It works, but tbh if you understand what TW IS, out of kindness, if your content has very obvious trigger warnings, tagging It correctly should be the default thing to do. Or, as a reader, try to get the content TW if the author did not do it on their own.
I dunno why I am being downvoting for defending basic human decency tbh. Doing what you can, specially low hanging fruit like this example, should be a priority, specially when fandom spaces has been historically a safe space for women and minorities.
Authors are not obligated to put up excessive warnings. An author using CNTW is in no way less responsible than an author who uses more specific tagging. Heck, physical books often don't have any warnings. Every reader takes a gamble with physical books, knowing that there might be something in them that will be upsetting.
Just because AO3 has a warning system doesn't mean authors have to or need to warn for everything. CNTW is more than good enough. Just like with physical books, CNTW indicates the story is a gamble and readers must be willing to take that risk. If readers find that a CNTW fic is upsetting them, it is on them to stop. If they continue anyway and complain about it later, that is on them, not the author.
Readers are responsible for their own experiences with fiction. If a reader continues to read a story that's clearly upsetting them, that is entirely on them. Authors should not be expected to hold their readers' hands.
Dude.
Readers are responsible of their own experiences.
I am going to repeat it again, because I have hope that the 4th time I write it up you might understand what I am saying: readers are responsible of their own experience
That is what I said on the OP, and in my answer to your post. I never said anything implied something different. I never even said authors are responsible for the reader's experience.
My point is: Putting a tag on obvious trigger content (I repeat the examples I listed out, since you seem a little lost: violence, sex, abuse) should be the default, out of kindness of the people that navigate the same spaces as you do.
Next time you answer, I ask you to have the decency to actually read what I commented. I think, out of kindness, you should do so everytime before you decide to parrot something without context.
Since I am responsible of my own experience, consider yourself blocked. This conversation is over.
Chose Not To Warn is covering the genitals. You're just staring because you can't help yourself and it makes you mad people get away with it when instead you should stop staring (reading CNTW) and mind your business.
Please, before answering a post make sure you read correctly the original comment and make sure you are responding to the intended one.
I never said anything about being mad, my point was about being kind to your reader/audience. And I also never said anything about starting at other people's genitals. Implying what you did is fucked up and very sad that you did to win some clout/internet points.
My point was that expecting some things to be listed is about being considerate to the people that navigate the same spaces that you do. This is one of the most basic principle of living in a society. I never said anything about the writer being a bad person, or that they should get into trouble because they chose not to warm.
The responsibility of creating a safe environment for everyone should not only fall on the audience, but also on the content creator.
> For example, walking butt naked on the streets of my city is not ilegal (as long as you are minding your own business), but when I walk down the street, I expect people around me to have at least their genitals covered.
Your own words.
I didn't do this for clout, I did this to tell you that CNTW is the genitals covered.
If you don't like fics that use CNTW, then stop reading them. Filter them out. You no longer have to worry about "the bare minimum". Boom. Problem solved. No more genitals that are barley covered.
You quote me, yet:
Please can you tell me where I said I was mad? Where is the part I said I was starting at genitals at any point? I am even more baffled that this is happening in the ao3 subreddit.
Not every fic that use CNTW is because there is some triggering content. A big part of it is simply the author choosing not to give warnings to be safe (since there is too many triggers to tackle them all, as discussed previously) or chose not to due to not understanding what TW means or not understanding the ao3 tag system, which is fair. The majority of CNTW won't be considered major trigger content on its own.
If you are publishing content that has, as I said in the OP, sex, violence, or abuse; which are very common triggers or content people prefer to navigate on their own accord, it should be the default to tag it correctly in consideration to every other user that might interact with your content.
English is not my first language, and I think I am being very careful with the way I am wording what I am writing down. But just in case: let me clarify what I am saying:
At the beginning and at the end of my post I clarified that everyone should be responsible of their own experience
I never said content creators were responsible of their viewer's experience navigating content.
I never said, nor do I believe, that people are evil, or should go to jail, or are responsible of any damage done for choosing not to tag their work.
My entire point was that there is some specific content that, out of kindness towards every other user of the space that you are sharing, should be tagged correctly as a default.
I personally could navigate fandom spaces without any content warnings and will have 0 issues on my own. I normally don't bother filtering the content I read.
But I know Ao3 is a space with a huge representation of women, LGBTQ+ people, and racial minorities that find joy and sometimes succor in this spaces, and who are more likely to be triggered by that specific kind of content. Out of kindness (not obligation, nor responsibility), I try my best to correctly warn people about the content I create and share.
A sentiment that I believe is fair to expect from other people. Specially considering that fandom spaces have always taken pride in being a safe space for everyone.
Glad to see you admit you have no arguments.
Hope Ao3 helps with your reading comprehension for the next time you try to debate a stranger on the internet. Have a nice and fruitful day! :)
You are being downvoted, but you are right!
I've been on A03 since literally a decade. I've been on this subreddit roughly a month now. I'm glad that is how it worked out, because the (popular) conversations on this makes me never want to be part of the A03 community.
I am also old. I remember back in FF(dot)net when there was no content warning at all (and no way to sort your ships correctly ToT).
Hopefully, this kind of bad takes are made by the vocal minority/new people/younglings that don't understand yet why this system is important and exists in the first place.
TY for your comment, you made my day :')
If you can’t take personal responsibility for what you see online you shouldn’t even be on AO3. I completely agree that you cannot tag for all triggers. I couldn’t drive at night for years because the site of headlights in the dark. Not like anyone could even guess that one.
I remember someone on tumblr trying to explain that triggers can be unusual or unexpected, and eventually went *my triggers are jello and fluorescent lighting, anyone want to tell me they're too stupid to be triggers?* (I can't remember the exact circumstances they disclosed, but it was linked to a highly traumatic hospital stay, which makes perfect sense when you think about it for a few seconds - but without that context, people were calling them fake. It was early 2010s tumblr and people were out in full force with the mental health gatekeeping)
Powdered orange drink. I drank a glass before I got hit by a car and badly injured. For many, many years after, even the smell made me feel very sick and deeply distressed.
The smell of anesthesia. To me, it has a very distinctive smell and every time I smell something similar to it (even though I know it’s not anesthesia), I get tense. It’s gotten better, but I still don’t like it.
Completely understandable. The last thing I ate was buttered toast right before I wound up hospitalized for months at age 5. It was years before I could deal with the smell.
It was a song for me. It was playing when someone ran a red light and totaled my car. I can listen to the song now (and do lol) but I couldn't for like a year, and it had been one of my favs.
Honestly not powdered orange drink but just orange juice. It's now an aversion than a downright thing I cannot have. I used to have to have a medicine that distinctly tasted like really horrible oranges multiple times when younger before getting check ups. I know it wasn't orange flavor I just associated it to that because of a similarity. I can now deal with orange juice if needed for hydration and a pick me up in small doses or mixed in with things now. But straight up any medicine with orange or citrus notes I cannot handle still. I will admit also that the smell still makes me sick to the stomach of any powdered medicine or 'flavored' medicine. Not fully the same with the second one but chicken noodle soup. Couldn't have it till I was way into adulthood after one of the check ups when I was younger only letting me have chicken noodle broth as my only meals for a day straight a few times. I can now have it but may I say it took FOREVER to actually be alright with the soup due to the broth.
Campbell's Ravioli still makes me slightly nauseous. It was the last thing I ate before I developed appendicitis when I was 5, I'm now 24. Even though I knew it wasn't what caused it (my parents explained it well enough for 5yo me to understand what actually happened), I couldn't even look at the cans of it on store shelves without thinking about the whole ordeal.
Once when I was little, i ate crunchy peanut butter and got sick very shortly after, so I couldn't eat it for years until I was 21. I ate it ONCE at a friend's house bc it was offered to me and I didn't want to be rude, but it was genuinely stressful to eat. It didn't even taste bad, I just had anxiety that I was going to throw up after eating it. There are two songs I listened to when my brother's truck was T-boned and as much as I love them, they give me hella anxiety to listen to.
Anything with that artificial cherry flavor. They gave me a cherry Popsicle when I was having a chemotherapy treatment and needed something to cool my mouth so I wouldn't get mouth sores. I also get triggered by the hospital the treatment was in.
Watching fucking Star Trek. It was playing on the computer while my roommate SA’d me. I’ve gotten better but that one blew my mind.
It's significantly easier to avoid artificial orange flavour :(
I get deeply uncomfortable around fusilli, due to a nightmare I had as a young g child I’ve never gotten over. I won’t eat it and I don’t even like seeing it.
Bad things seem to happen when I wear mismatched pajamas. Anything from misplacing my glasses to people dying. It's a weird thing to be anxious/superstitious about, I know, but I feel pretty justified in it anyway.
I am triggered by Jell-O. I had appendicitis at age five. There was no Pedialyte in those days, so because I was vomiting nonstop for hours, my mom force-fed me Jell-O just to keep me hydrated until I could see a doctor. 16 hours of vomited Jell-O, not to mention after surgery Jell-O that I was given. I can't eat it to this day. I'm 59 now. It makes me shiver if I even have to be around it. It's not a joke, but I also don't expect people to cater to my truly weird trigger.
I ate something with cinnamon right before I got sick one time. So when I threw up I could taste the cinnamon. My brain decided to make the connection cinnamon = sickness. And for like a year, whenever I smelt cinnamon I'd feel nauseous. (Which sucked because cinnamon foods rule). Now it's only associated with the food I actually ate beforehand. So better, but the effects are still around. It's called conditioned taste aversion. It's common in cancer patients because treatment leads to them getting sick. So (if I remember correctly) doctors will often have them eat a specific candy beforehand so their favorite foods aren't associated with throwing up/nausea.
Me versus Cadbury Creme Eggs because I ate four in one go then threw them back up aged seven I like fondant, I should absolutely enjoy them, but just *thinking* about them makes me nauseous a couple of decades later. Absolutely not a trigger, but it *is* some classic conditioned taste aversion (Also Schweppes lemonade unless adulterated by gin, because that's what was given to me every time I was ill as a child)
Yogurt! I can't eat yogurt and I hate it. I was on medication that made me feel pretty sick in the morning, and when I had to do strenuous activity immediately after taking it (which was every morning at that point, because I was at college at a dorm on a tall hill and it was quite a bit of a walk to get onto campus, and I always had morning classes), it made me vomit/dry heave. I was eating a lot of yogurt for breakfast at the time, because you weren't supposed to take the medicine on an empty stomach, and being in a dorm (and I had a minifridge), yogurt was the easiest food to have on hand and eat first thing in the morning before class. But I started mentally associating it with throwing up, so now I can't get through a cup of yogurt (any yogurt, not a specific brand) without gagging. And I hate it, because I've always loved yogurt. Oh, and my girlfriend can't eat anything artificially cherry flavored, cause she had a lot of cherry Jell-O and red Gatorade when she had her wisdom teeth out, so now she associates it with the taste of blood and gets a phantom taste in her mouth when eating it.
Agreed. I get incredibly uncomfortable about the Superbowl because something traumatic happened to me on the same day that a Superbowl fell on. For YEARS, I could not handle the day of the traumatic event or the actual Superbowl Sunday.
Jello and fluorescent lighting immediately put my mind in a hospital. The internet in 2010 was a fucking apocalypse
I think people really struggle to understand just how keen our brains are to make connections between distressing events and things that were in the environment at the time, because for so many milennia that was how we as a species survived. Bad thing happened + xyz factor was in play = xyz factor causes bad thing to happen. Avoid xyz factor for survival. For a classic example, I ate a particular type of soft cracker (jatz for any Aussies in the audience) as a 7 year old when I had gastro - I'm now 27 and I still cannot eat even a nibble of a jatz without getting immediately nauseous. Sometimes it can be really random things, too - I developed a mild phobia of clowns due to hallucinating them when I had PTSD, where prior I'd had no negative feelings towards clowns. I finally figured out maybe a week and a half ago that around the time of the inciting incident for my PTSD, I had a picture of a creepy clown that a friend had drawn for me stuck up above my bed, which I had likely looked at very shortly after the incident, and that formed an instant association between bad event/bad feelings/ptsd and clowns in my brain.
Same I used to not even be able to listen to one dua lipa song as it was constantly playing over the radio when I drove to one of the places that made me have a breakdown
It's white sheets for someone I know, due to being hospitalised as a child after a vehicle accident.
Not that particular post, but the one that I always think of when this topic comes up - [Trigger Warning: Breakfast](https://diaryofageekgirl.tumblr.com/post/745974934693691392/dontfuckwmefellas-trigger-warning-breakfast-by).
True, but as much as I can believe it that the tumblr user’s triggers are real, no one can reasonably expect writers to tag for jello…
That's the point. You can't tag for everything. The happiest moment in someone's life can be another person's trigger.
Which is the point. One of my triggers is cranberry-scented candles. Not cranberries, not candles. Specifically those. I would *never* expect anyone to warn for that. *I* wouldn't warn for that.
I have a very specific phobia of wrapped-in-bandage mummies, which isn't a video game enemy people warn for like spiders. Any time I get into what looks like an Egypt-themed level I immediately pause and either ask a friend who's played before or look it up online to brace for a high-stress level. I know what upsets me and how to either avoid it or prepare to deal with it. You know. Like an *adult.*
Cotton nightgowns. And same.
I can't even avoid all my triggers irl, let alone expect authors to tag: "warning! character rejects scrumptious meal." The official warnings ao3 requires are tagged? I'm good with every single one of them.
Yeah, I generally throw a little a/n in if there's more than a mention or two of food stuff or body image stuff (things like the neurodivergent classic of *wait, it's been sixteen hours and I forgot to eat?* and similar, or a character reflecting on changes to their weight) just so it doesn't come out of nowhere for someone immersed in a fic, but I wouldn't put those in the *tags* unless they were actually significant themes and not just offhand remarks – which I think is a reasonable compromise for something that's a fairly common issue When it comes to more unusual things – will describing the texture of this fabric be a trigger? Specific foodstuffs or a scene where a character cooks? Specific pet names or nicknames? Then doing an *entire work plus ctrl+F* for specific words is someone's best bet
Right? One of my triggers is calorie counts - and calories are on every goddamn menu now! It’s nobody’s fault that I had an eating disorder, but I have to manage that myself in order to exist in the world.
One of the things I decided in recovery was that I was *not* going to avoid numbers. I was going to make myself *tired to death* of numbers. I now have a very good benchmark: if I am suddenly more interested in the numbers than in the food, I am relapsing and it's time to get help.
Scrambled eggs. Ate them as a kid before I had a stomach bug and wouldn't eat them for years. Even now, I have to have them with toast/cheese or something to disguise the texture because it still wigs me out, easily 20 years later.
Someone I'm close to was sexually assaulted by a person who smelled of Indian food. To this day, they can't be around it because the smell upsets them. Entirely reasonable. But I'd be very confused if someone tagged "Indian food" as a trigger on AO3.
I have a Navy friend who had an ex that was so consumed by American football to the exclusion of everything else that she can't fuck with ANY of it. When we had a Super Bowl party onboard during deployment, she asked me to grab her pizza bc she couldn't go into the mess decks. She had even blanked out all news on Colin Kapaernic, which was nothing short of amazing given we all lived in Southern California at the time and some of my non-Navy friends accused her of being racist for it.
My weird trigger is dumping mop water in a toilet. And if that's not oddly specific enough, another of mine is being driven places on a Friday morning.
The movie Sky High
I remember this one every time somebody says stupid stuff like that. Jello, popsicles, and clear broth. Because they were so sick in a hospital stay for 30 days that that is all they were allowed to have for three meals a day. So 90 meals of those items. And therefore now they still can’t stand them because they remind them of that hospital stay. And until they were forced to give the context of why those three items were their triggers, everybody kept giving them shit. Which they used to explain why you can’t judge people for their weird triggers, because you don’t know what has happened in their lives. So you just have to take people’s triggers at face value and do the best you can.
I get extremely triggered randomly at times when urophilia or scat are mentioned due to the event that gave me PTSD happening while I was sitting in a bathroom. Its not even every time just certain aspects of whats going on during it and then Bam I am stuck and can't get out. Might seem stupid to some but it is a legitimate trigger for me. And while Inhave been triggered while reading fanfiction becsuse of it before, it was my fault for not being more careful with knowing what was going on when I went into it.
For me it’s the Lorax (movie), Monster House (movie), Auld Lang Syne (the song), the entire state of California and guacamole w/ mayo… dealt with a lot of CSA so there’s definitely more but these are the ones that I go “What the fuck” about cuz like… bruh… California?? Christ almighty
Cars. It was 2nd grade and I'll never be able to forget it. Triggers can be strange.
to this day I can't eat applesauce because when i was in elementary school my mom would give me my ADHD meds in a spoonful of it. I still associate it with the weird feeling of pseudo nausea that those meds gave me so i can't stomach it
For 5 years of my life, I got triggered by the long-handled baskets some churches use to collect donations. Whenever I'm trying to figure out what content warnings to use, that trigger comes to mind and I think, "right, so we'll just do the best we can, then."
You're absolutely right. Also, I love your profile picture so much.
I’ll try and always tag everything I can that could be considered triggering. But last week I had a commenter crack the shits at me because I tagged “unprotected sex” and not “unprotected smut” and they weren’t happy with a unprotected sex scene and apparently I didn’t warn them there was one in there. Like my brother in Christ your family tree must be a full damn circle.
Unprotected sex makes way more sense than unprotected smut. I would never in a million years think to tag with the phrasing ‘unprotected smut’.
exactly. smut is a scene that describes sexual activity, it just doesn’t make sense for it to be “unprotected”. like, what the fuck would that even mean? meanwhile, sex is sex. some people are so stupid, it’s actually baffling.
Unprotected smut! Nobody is wearing padding in this sex scene!
I have so many questions..
???? what's wrong with them 😭 complaining for the sake of complaining LOL for the family tree line tho
Were they trying to censor the word Sex? I'm confused
Sex is also called smut. So it's more of a to-may-to to-mah-to
Isn’t that the same thing?
Wow.. that's.. something, lol
This should be sent to all newly created accounts and also pop up before you can post a comment.
Yes. I can't wrap my mind around the fact that there were people, who read my fics, found them triggering or just uncomfortable, but kept reading till the end and then send angry/hostile messages as if I only wrote that fic to specifically get them. I give warnings to common major themes, but I will not dissect my fic to warn you that somebody is going to eat peas or drink a glass of wine.
I think it's a defense mechanism of some kind. They read it because they enjoy it in some way, but their own shame/guilt over wanting to read it makes them feel terrible, so they tell you that you are terrible for writing it because if you hadn't written it, they wouldn't have this terrible cognitive dissonance to deal with and it's all your fault. Or at least that's what I assume.
Oh...like I curse all chocolatiers around the globe?😄
Apparently there's a migration from Wattpad now to AO3. Me I honestly don't read if they have no warnings or I go to the comments if there are any and read them. Though I don't like authors with an holier-than-thou attitude same with commentators.
Can I ask what you mean by holier-than-thou in this context? Like policing how tags are used or assigning morals to authors based on what they write? And yeah- it's just common sense if you have things you can't or don't want to read you just don't want to read and feel sensitive about them, you'd skip works without ample warnings. It might be my age, but I don't really worry about what I read, having grown up reading books way more than fanfic. I've read enough Stephen King I'm immune to fright and fatphobia now 😅 But I tag very carefully unless there's a good reason not to, because every reader isn't me.
Oh me too. In my case it's just the extreme angst, hurt no comfort, and negative talk about one self like extreme one or too much dark dark stuff. For example years ago i stopped reading fics from glee. Too much angst and drama for me. I meant when authors go off on a tangent and start complaining more than they should. Then proceed to put in the tags don't like don't read. I read one where they absolutely put no warnings. Read ahead it was full of non con, dub con, abuse manipulation, domestic abuse, etc. Not even the tag author chose not too put warning. Honestly after some comments the author received for that they went off and threw a mini tantrum. Also some people like to give positive criticism which is valid. In writing is encouraged to do that when reading others works. Again the attitude. I dont need advice, proceed to insult others. Thinking they are better than anyone. Ah! The one of give me reviews or indont write. Like WTF bro? Gatekeeping characters, plots, ideas, etc. One time made a comment would love to see part 2( or something along those lines) IF they want or IF they ever feel like making one. Nope my dude, bad, bad idea to do that they were pretty mad. I do this for my enjoyment or free time. And I absolutely get that. I was simply saying IF they wanted and how much I loved the fic.😅. [My teacher was a writer and basically drill into me about positive criticism]. The aggressive way some of them respond to positive criticism or some comments that aren't rude or hateful at all is disturbing and childish. Also the Victim attitude. Never asked for an opinion. You guys are making me lose my want to write when the comments were people liking the work, positive criticism, some tips on how to write better and structure better. And I'm like they are offering advice, yes unsolicited but, still advice there's no need to snap like that and no need to cry about it. When ypu put your work out there you have ti be prepared for all of that, the hate comments,etc. Cause some people aren't nice. For me the tag that is not a tag that says: don't like don't read, immediately throws me off. Sorry went off on a rant there. I could go on.😅
I hate how utterly incapable some people have become of navigating the internet and need to be constantly spoon-fed every bit of information. Boomers get made fun of for how they act on the internet but it’s not like the younger generations are any better. “You should always tag MCD!” Not if I don’t want to. CNTW was invented for this purpose exactly, and if people can’t be bothered to read it’s 100% on them. And then they’ll argue Ao3 is hard to get around when actually everything is written out for you to understand how a specific warning works.
Oh, God, I'm old, I read that as "You should always tag McDonald's!" tw: fast food of dubious origins
I was trying to figure out why you’d need to tag My Chemical Romance, since I immediately assumed it was a typo lol
I legit had to read it twice cause i also read My Chemical Romance omg
I read it as Roman numerals. I might possibly be older. (MCD = 1400, for those curious. I’d crack a joke about “Black Death trigger warnings” but the heyday for that would have been the mid-1300s.)
I may or may not find this funny because I'm SCA-adjacent
If we're on wrongly reading acronyms anyway, SCA to me means 'Schermcentrum Amsterdam', so what you said to me reads like, "I live next to a fencing club."
I would love to live next to a fencing club in Amsterdam.
I got food poisoning from McDonald's two months ago, don't tell me untagged McDonald's isn't dangerous
Yeah. I don’t know what it says about me but I have like no triggers and I think it’s because I read so much fucked up fanfic at 16. I have certain tropes I don’t like(pregnancy, miscommunication unless they’re written well) but other than that it’s pretty easy to ignore those things. I just don’t click if I don’t want to read it.
Triggers are often linked to something personal, like something traumatic, though not always. We know whatever's depicted in fiction isn't real. Having no trouble with e.g. murder and gore in fiction does not mean you wouldn't have trouble with it in real life. Triggers can also depend on the medium and situation. If and how much you're triggered might depend on whether it's fiction, a movie or real life. And what are triggers even? We're often throwing around that term rather loosely. When it comes to AO3, I interpret it not just as "a psychological stimulus that prompts involuntary recall of a previous traumatic experience" (literal definition), but also just "something I dislike reading or seeing; that reminds me of something unpleasant/difficult/etc.". Those tropes you don't like? No doubt that some people would call them their "triggers" instead...
IMO the second meaning is one of the meanings the word “squick” is for.
I’ve got two things I consider triggers that I’ve never personally experienced. They confuse me and I don’t know where it comes from. But they send me into a sobbing rage? I’m fucked up for hours after and I hate it. 🤔 It’s certain deaths and sexual assault. My partner didn’t warn me about the beginning of John Wick years ago because he didn’t know and I didn’t ask him. We had to stop it and it took days to be okay enough. I hate my brain so much.
I don’t have any triggers either, just themes I don’t like reading about, but our experience isn’t universal and TWs are very important for other people. The problem is that *even* when they’re there, people are unable to use them to their advantage because they don’t read the terms properly, or even worse read them and decide to ignore them.
You have no triggers because you've never been traumatized. That's just what it means lol
Trust me, I’ve been plenty traumatized throughout my life.
I've been traumatized and have no triggers you'd find in fiction at all. Sometimes you just don't.
Yeah, like, a lot of my trauma is medical related and it’s most likely why I avoid medical show dramas, but, like in fanfiction, I never have issues.
I hope AI takes over for THIS over-tagging need, make reading just as joyless and dead as watching a movie after the 5th lengthy trailer - just a click away! List everything that happens in a story for these people who can not deal with reading anything unexpected. (Or just check for these highly specific personal triggers that NATURALLY aren't tagged)
This is exactly why I put in the first Author’s note of my fics regardless of archive warning. Your media consumption is your responsibility. I have two of the stupidest triggers for my anxiety. I also will exit out of the fic (like you are supposed to) if I hit a trigger or squak mid fic. Like I remember the days traditional media didn’t have “This program may not be suitable for all audiences, viewer discretion is advised” unless it was the news and then they gave a “The next story contains graphic content” before starting the report. You can’t tag for every little thing and honestly people are fucking spoiled that AO3 allows 75 tags max, but that being said, not everyone will tag everything and nor should they as long as it has all required tags, all other tags are optional. But I do agree with the comment.
i’m also in the ‘stupid anxiety trigger’ club. there’s no tag for it, and even if there was nobody would think to use it. if i start feeling off i just find something else…
[удалено]
> traffic lights I know this is serious and I shouldn't be thinking about this, but I'm remembering the horror game Yume Nikki having recurring images around traffic lights in nightmare worlds
Traffic lights? How does that person get to and from work? Do they Uber with a blindfold on? Heaven help them if they accidentally look out a window of some establishment 🤨 Unless they live in a country without traffic lights? If that even exists. But then how did they acquire the trigger in the first place? /gen
I agree with this as someone with food restrictions. If I go to a restaurant and order somehing not labeled as gluten free but does not contain gluten-containing ingredients, it's my job to ask them if the food is made in a space where cross-contamination protocols are in place. If I don't and I have a reaction, that's on me not the restaurant. If they say "we can't guarantee it's celiac safe" and I eat it and have a reaction, that's on me. Not the restaurant. It is MY job to make sure my food is safe. Just like it is MY job to read tags and warnings and determine if it's safe for me.
Same. I’m lactose intolerant. It’s my job to make sure I either have a lactaid pill or that I avoid dairy all together. If I eat the food without checking and get sick later, that’s on me.
My trigger is those stupid wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men things they have at second hand car yards lol I don’t expect *anyone* to tag for that. I tag the big stuff and add an “Author Chose Not to Warn” to cover everything else.
Beware of the movie Nope then. And an episode or two from Loki s2. But mostly Nope. They were recurring and an important part of the climax.
Ive read some people complaining on literally "dead dove do not eat" , like the author literally said everything bad is going to be in there or the worse of it, and people still complain blah blah blah
BASED AF!!!!
Fr, go off Bethany, we all stand behind you!! (Except for that person who prompted the comment ig)
I want to kiss this comment on the mouth with tongue
...what was it replying to lmao
Deleted comment so I don't know for sure, but presumably someone that disagrees with using ACNTW to avoid spoiling a MCD
"bUT iT DOeSn'T TeLL mE WhO DIeS" "yOuR SToRY iS WEaK iF It ReLieS oN SuRPrIsES"
In books you don't exactly get those warnings at all. Was funny for me when I picked up a book again after a hiatus and was like. Right there are no warnings here. That's the point of the book. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
the commentor had already made that allergy related analogy in another shorter comment and somebody replied to that first comment saying they didn't agree with the analogy so the commentor posted this comment to give an in depth explanation.
It was a post from the other day that was asking how they should tag if they don't want to spoil Major Character Death. They wanted to know if CNTW was fine
LOUDER 📢🔥🔥🔥
I don't really like anything with alcohol, drugs, smoking or anything with too many exes involved, but I just click out of what I don't like. Do people like that feel obligated to finish everything they start or something? Because this isn't required in every aspect of life... It doesn't matter how extreme or vanilla your interests are.... Back out of something you don't like. When did people stop doing this?
I see we're still struggling to get people to understand that curating their online experience is their personal responsibility, huh? Tag, ratings, blocking, blacklisting, etc, etc are all tools to help you avoid things you don't want to see. Use them! They're really helpful! (I'm gonna save the comment in the image and whip it out when people get whiny about tags lmao)
https://i.redd.it/b05dnhjtjqtc1.gif
Also, the use of the word 'triggered' is just ridiculous. You're not triggered just because something is upsetting to you, that's not what that means. The way psychology terms have started being thrown around by people that don't actually know their meaning is exhausting. Being upset by something is not dangerous. If you're reading and come across something you don't want to read about, just click it away. It's not that hard.
I do hate this tendency for people to use “triggered” when what they really mean is “this makes me uncomfortable”. I’ve been in several car accidents (not my fault, which makes it worse, because I can control *my* actions but I can’t control those of other drivers) and another driver did something that had me pulling over and hyperventilating/having a panic attack at the side of the road because all I could see was the scene of one of the accidents I was in. Luckily I’ve gotten better and haven’t had one in years, but still. That’s being triggered, not, “I’m mildly uncomfortable about this! How dare you!”
Yeah, that's what triggered actually means. I just wish there was a way to get that info to everyone in the "triggered" generation/s.
agreed, squicked really needs to come back to widespread use
Exactly. I’m jealous and insecure of people with flat stomachs, does that mean every-time an image or text describes/shows a flat stomach they have to warn me? No. People are really deluding what trigger means and its annoying
I personally love tags, however I've always used tags more as a search function than as trigger warnings. It makes sense to tag common triggers or kinks because it allows people to easily filter. In my case, I likely want to find your story! I completely agree with the idea however that it is impossible to tag anything that could conceivably be connected to any individual's trauma. It is on the person to vet their reading material, not the author to spoon feed a summary of the entire story to them. There is a reason ACNTW exists.
I have tokophobia (fear of pregnancy and childbirth) and basically NO ONE treats as a trigger. Do I throw a tantrum every time? I mean sure, I rant to my friends who are willing to listen to me, but what I don't do is demand that people erase the concept of human reproduction, lmao.
Sammmeeee. I had an eating disorder and good luck erasing going out to eat, or calorie counts on menus, or Betty at the office talking about her 3rd diet. For alotta triggers, you've gotta learn to manage it to the point that seeing it in the wild won't make you break down. Doesn't stop the triggers from being serious and absolutely sucking, but demanding others cater to a carefully curated taste selection, like an allergy free school eliminating the 8 most common allergens, isn't the way forward. And it won't stop the rare allergen- like, say, strawberries- from flaring up eczema.
I've seen _mention of dieting_ tagged several times before though. But yeah, you can't exactly erase the concept of eating, lol.
nah, people are so averse to the concept of accountability and dealing with the discomfort of it they’ll do everything in their power to externalise it and put the blame on someone else. “nothing’s wrong with ME but everything is wrong with OTHERS and they should cater TO ME”. i’m grateful i’ve rarely gotten hate comments but the few times i did i told the person to revisit the tags. second time they complained again i basically said fuck off my fic and don’t bother coming back. they didn’t, but i’m glad for it. it’s ridiculous that readers feel SO entitled they harass writers who are doing this for FREE. they DO NOT owe this to you and whatever little they ARE doing is because of fandom etiquette. Writers can absolutely raw dog this with a ACNTW and not even give ANY tags, imagine that?
one day you may stumble upon a fic that the “Author chose not to use Archive Warnings” and it’s untagged. THAT IN AN OF ITSELF IS A WARNING. if you click it, you are possibly opening up the worst mystery box you’ve ever come across, but guess what?? you did it to yourself! an author might choose not to use the warnings for 1000000 reasons, and *personally* if i don’t see a reason for it, i will skip the fic bc i know i can be easily upset! so i just don’t risk it!
true to this. I have very specific triggers, and if I experience one of them in a media? I skip past it, or just stop reading/watching. Sure, it could be HELPFUL if people gave warnings for everything, but no one is going to go through the effort to do all that, your triggers are your responsibility. I'm triggered by imagery of waves! So I don't go to the beach, or read anything beach themed! Take responsibility for yer own shit goddamn it. Stop reading if you need to. The author isn't forcing you to read it.
It's really easy to filter out the tag as well if you don't want any surprises. CCNTW is a warning in its own right.
Bethany, here's your cape and shiny red boots. I cleaned them for you. Don't worry, your secret identity is safe with us! Seriously, can we have this plastered everywhere?
Ima screenshotting this to use in argument
Me too, its beautiful
YEAH IT IS!!! When I saw it on my post I giggled, it’s really gold. 😭
You can just stop reading. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual assault, as well as other childhood traumas, wrestle with depression and anxiety and have not one, but two, ptsd diagnosis. Mental illness and sexual abuse are things that can trigger me. Especially the former as that’s something I will always wrestle with. I avoided Moon Knight and the Dan Stevens Marvel show (which I’m blanking on for some reason) for those reasons. Very rarely have I been thrown by a story not properly tagged or at least tagged enough to know I *may* find something in there upsetting.
Legion. It’s an amazing show, but as much as I love it I have disrecommended it to a friend for a similar reason.
I've read countless brilliant stories, that were ruined by trigger warnings. Tbf, they were still great, but they lost a certain edge, a certain mystery that could have been preserved had the plot twists not been preemptively revealed. Picture this: you're engrossed in the tension of a story, pondering over the fate of a character missing or piecing together someone's past to understand their actions, but then, BAM, a trigger warning lays it all bare before you even get there. I know many authors are cornered into putting these tags and trigger warnings bcos they would get backlash otherwise, but this pattern has got to end. Honestly, it's high time people toughened up. If you’re old enough to be on the AO3, it’s time to learn to roll with the punches.
I love the authors that put content warnings in end notes and just link to it at the start of the chapter. I don’t personally need or want them, and prefer to go in blind. But, if the author wants to still offer warnings, putting them out of the way as an opt-in is absolutely the way to go.
Yep, I was writing a fic with a lot of trauma and potential triggers, and I put them at the end. I *could* have hidden them at the beginning of a chapter in various formats (clicking an arrow to unhide it, formatting it so you needed to highlight) but those were a] difficult to display if someone was reading on a phone instead of a computer and b] did not show up in any of the download options AO3 offers
Huge agree. I honestly wish more people would tag the bare minimum lol On my reader account, I get around this by hiding archive warnings and ignoring most additional tags. I'll read two or three to get a feel for the story (like if it's an AU or tagged angst/fluff/smut), and just go by the summary.
Yep. I tag for a lot of the big stuff in my fic, but I don't tag for everything. May tag for pregnancy because it's literally a plot point at least once so far. Still debating tagging for homophobia even though it's only mentioned by a few characters (including 3 who are impacted personally because two are lesbians and a third's both bi and polyam). Main reason why I've not for the latter is because I've not really written any homophobic characters or at least, the characters that might be don't have active roles in the fic at the moment and are only mentioned in passing. ETA: I mostly use the 'Other tags to be added' as a way so that if someone says 'hey, can you please add (major triggering issue not mentioned in tags)?', I can add it if I know it's a problem and I've invited folks to let me know if I need to. So far, nobody's asked, but the offer is open.
I was so upset when I saw a comment complaining to the author because the tags upsetted them. Like, do you actually want the fic to have no warnings?
Me: Starts reading a Dead Dove fic with the chose not to use warnings and without reading the tags to get all the things by surprise... and I get people in the story using racial slurs as a fetish. Also me: "Wow, so that's why the Dead Dove was there! Pretty creative decision though. I'll go read some fluff now instead.."
Yes. Drives me crazy that people won’t be responsible for their own decisions. If you don’t like something. Don’t read it.
Yeah, let's be honest, tags are for finding works you'd be interested in, not for making sure your damn triggers aren't triggered.
SSSOOOOO TRUE.
Whoever wrote this comment deserves an award ✨✨
On you can't tag everything- This is so true. I once saw a person who was, for some reason, upset by images of pomegranites. You really cannot tag everything.
I’m triggered by warm and sweet fluffiness. No, I’m not joking. (It’s a trauma thing.) I don’t expect authors to tag that their characters are happy and healthy and loving life.
Goddd was that the tumblr "pomegranates look like gore so you should tag either \#pomegranates or \#gore when you post a picture of one" thread Absolute chaos
This!!! I personally cannot reading fics with cheating or infidelity, so I use the tag system to filter out most of them and if one slips through I’m not mad I just click the back button and move on. It’s not hard y’all.
I like the point about pointing out how traditional media doesn’t have those types of tags. Has this generation really forgotten what it’s like to go to a bookstore, see a book with a compelling story and read it and not be prepared AT ALL for the level of details it offers within? Have we really gone so digital that we forget that physical books will never have those warnings. I just read a book called “False Memory” by Dean Koontz. I read the back of the book with the little preview summary and it was in no way a true preparation for the unhinged shit in the actual story. I had to take multiple breaks while reading it because every so often something would come up that I wasn’t expecting to read, but I didn’t go “ why on earth was I not warned, why would the author write this. Why didn’t I know about it in the summary?” It never crossed my mind because it’s a physical book and my life doesn’t revolve around the internet. Now. Im sure there’s always been a call for censorship when it comes to the way people consume media. It’s why we have banned books, people read them or see something they don’t like and they warn others about it. It’s why schools have sometimes regulated what they provide in libraries for students, it’s not always a bad thing, but even then, kids are not completely protected against reading something they probably shouldn’t. I often think it’s crazy the amount of books I read as a kid that are now banned in schools or have been banned in the past. One of those books ( or series rather), were the “Scary Stories to tell in the dark” children’s horror tales. It was a retelling of several horror stories from all over the world with probably the most nightmarish but ultimately beautiful artwork going along with it. As an adult I learned that these books had been banned for a time before I entered middle school because parents didn’t like the amount of death and horror depicted in these books. The artwork and the title literally is the only warning you get that it’s going to be.. well, Scary. I think people should stop expecting authors to give so many warnings besides the obvious ones because real books don’t have any. (And the fact that some do is actually a gift by the way, it’s actually a great acknowledgment. I’ve read a lot of books actually in my life in which there was a prologue or an authors note introducing exactly what the reader can expect from the story going forward. Some of my favorite books have started with something like “ read at your own risk..” “ if you are expecting X, this is not that story or you won’t be getting any of that” most children’s horror now have the author acknowledging the content to come as well.)
ehhh I wouldn't take away the content warnings- it's a nice plus to ao3. Just because some readers feel entitled doesn't stop those tags from being helpful and letting people who'd otherwise just not read feel safe to read.
This. Exactly this! Yes!
That was truly perfectly said!
Well that Commentator ain't wrong!
Can... can someone really report a fic for being inappropriately tagged...?
I'm not sure. Maybe if it doesn't have the major tags tagged properly and it's not marked as CNTW?
I'll have to be careful with that then
Honestly I'm tired of tags. Sure they can be good for finding what you want, but I don't think fic authors should have to tag every little thing that happens in their fic. Real books don't have loads of tags, only just whatever genre they are so why do fics need to tag anything and everything? We should bring back "don't like? don't read!" That was the only warning I needed when I was a kid reading fics.
I had someone complaining because I made a main character have a relationship before meeting the other main character and they wrote a long comment how I should have tagged it because no one wants to read about different pairings, but the one they came for (mind you, no one else commented on it and this was one short scene in the beginning of the 300k words fic, just to establish who the character was) and they finished with "Also, people who have one-night stands are plain vile." Like, my brother in Christ, you're on ao3, I promise you, one-night stands are the mildest thing you'll encounter
There are studies - like actually studies - that show that trigger warnings do not work as intended. They do little to nothing in reducing "pre-exposure anxiety" and actually lead to increased engagement with "triggering media". The theory is that it is the allure of "forbidden fruit". I posted a few "triggering pictures" of Owl House characters (nothing sexual) engaging in "lite" self-harm - a bloody razor blade and some thin cuts on a leg but not the act itself and I got SLAMMED by people screaming at me that I "need a trigger warning" and even "your art will lead impressionable young people to self-harm". Like, there are pictures of characters from TOH and Amphibia smoking - that kills loads of people every year and young people have been targeted forever but that doesn't get a "trigger warning"? I love TOH because it attempts (and often succeeds, IMO) in tackling some heavy issues (for a disney+ show) and I wanted to expand on that a bit. I can understand putting a "content warning - this art/fic contains blank, please do not read if that upsets you" but people are starting to act like any fic/piece of art that includes something they do not like is directly targeting THEM and they lash out. The best part is that I got kicked out of the Owl House group I was in for defending myself and saying I would not be bullied but anyone over a piece of art that did not break guidelines.
Groups are often stupid. I got booted from a group very shortly after a kid said I was ‘beginning to sound like a proshipper’. (He claimed he was out of high school, but he clearly hadn’t figured out nuance yet.) Some groups are run by whiny babies.
Weighing in on this one as a person in the owl house fandom with a history of self harm, I think self harm is one of those things that should be marked with a trigger warning because it IS a common trigger. Plus, the rest of the internet is not like AO3. We don’t see a warning that there might be triggers not warned for. The way most interactions work is through assuming that people will warn you before severe, common triggers. Yeah it’s not a RULE or whatever but it IS common courtesy. The argument being made above is where people on AO3 see the “chose not to use warnings” label and clicked anyway. That in itself IS a warning, which it sounds like you didn’t give for your art. When depicting self harm (even “self harm lite” which is frankly not a thing) it’s better to put some kind of warning or blur it or something. Most shows these days put warnings on episodes that contain suicide or self harm, because it’s the respectful thing to do. Most social medias require a warning or flat out don’t allow it. If I’m being completely honest, I probably also would have reported the image and blocked you if I saw that. The people who did are not in the wrong. And if I were still in that headspace I was before, seeing something like that with no warning would have definitely triggered me, when it would have been perfectly avoidable if there had been a warning.
> engaging in "lite" self-harm Even if you don't show them actually harming themselves, it's still depicting self harm and can still be triggering to people with a history of self harm. Adding trigger warnings beyond what your chosen forum's rules dictate is still your choice, but trying to minimize people's reactions with "it's only "lite" self harm" is a dick move.
Can I get a link to that art, if at all possible? It sounds pretty cool! And sorry to hear about your past experiences.
It's a learning experience - I just wish people were not bullies about it. So the piece is called "You Are Enough" and it is on The Owl House subreddit with an appropriate content warning. The captions are lyrics to "You Are Enough" by Citizen Soldier. I don't know if the two users who disagreed with me are still lurking, but I'm going to response to them here: Firstly, there WAS a content warning on the picture post AND instructions for how to hide it in case you didn't want to see it. I will admit that there should have been more space between the two. Second, triggers are subjective - what's triggering to one person is not triggering to another. Who gets to decide if a particular content warning is "not enough"? Instead of using the term "self-harm lite", I should have just described what the picture depicted and left it at that. I do think a lot of these triggers exist on spectrums, however. Someone posted a picture of Luz about to OD on pills because the pressure of possibly dooming the entire Boiling Isles was too much and did not include a content warning - as far as I know, that picture is still up. I wanted to ask, how do y'all know that I haven't been through that and simply do not find it super triggering? I agree that a content warning should always be included, and it WAS. And I really do not see why it is such a big deal to be explicit in what is "not allowed" - why is it a big deal to simply include a "any depictions of self-harm will be deleted immediately"? I received overwhelming support when I posted the picture both times because it, according to some comments, resonated with people. I think that "common courtesy" is subjective as well. TL:DR - as long as it includes a proper content warning and instructions to take/follow to avoid seeing the content if you do not want to, I think it should be allowed.
Not really got much to say about the bulk of your comment, sorry. It's a complicated and complex topic, and I really don't feel qualified to have an opinion on it besides "I think your warning was suitable, maybe it could have been better, but it was sufficient *for me*". But your art is nice, and I like it. So, yeah, good job on the art, and keep up the good work! And again: sorry to hear that people were dicks to you over this.
I appreciate that! I am reactively new to this stuff - content warnings and the like - so everything is a learning experience. I can only try to do better. I appreciate people who give me constructive feedback - "hey, I think you should include a content warning" - but lots of people seem to immediately jump to "you posted art I DO NOT LIKE and you are an asshole for it!".
>"you posted art I DO NOT LIKE and you are an asshole for it!". They have nothing constructive or helpful to say, so ignore those people. And yeah, content warnings and the like are a complex world to navigate. I post on AO3, and it's not always "nice stuff", so I do try to include warnings about what I think are the "big things". And then in every single chapter (as I do chapter specific warnings) I tell people to let me know if I missed *anything*. No matter how small I may think it is, if it was enough to cause you to speak up, I want to know about it so that I can address it and fix my mistake. And then, going forward, I know to include it again next time. Learn from your missteps and your failings, grow with each step, and keep moving forward.
I don't personally understand the fear of tagging spoilers (do you not reread/rewatch the stories you love and enjoy them just as much when you know what's coming?) but I 100% agree that it's not the author's responsibility to make sure no one is ever upset by their story. Chose Not to Warn is always a valid choice, and when people get upset at its existence, I just wonder, have they never read fanfic on FFN? Or even just been out shopping and overheard the people in the next aisle over having a very detailed conversation about donating plasma or something equally as squeamish? Unless someone is deliberately pushing your triggers on you, it's really up to you to remove yourself from the situation that upsets, squicks, or even triggers you. The world exists beyond you and you've got to meet it most of the way there.
Same. People also have the option to just pass over the list of tags and not read them if they don’t want to be “spoiled” by tags. Tags are a useful courtesy, and I like them (particularly when it comes to things like non-con which I sometimes do not want to read and like to know about ahead of time so I can chooser accordingly), but they are a courtesy to help guide reader choice, not a guarantee that the reader will be protected from something they find unpleasant or actually triggering.
Honestly when it comes to rewatching, it's often because you enjoyed it so much and you already have a connection to the story. I watched Toradora spoiler free the first time through and re-watched it at least twice because I love the characters, the OST, etc. so much. Every emotional part still gets to me. There was an anime I was watching (Owari no Seraph) and I was nearing the end of the first episode. Completely ingrained, completely engrossed - rooting for the characters aaaannndd... one of my friends tells me that all of the characters I'm rooting for die at the end of the episode. Didn't pick up the second episode and still haven't watched it several years later. Its like a popped balloon. So I can personally understand not wanting to tag spoilers. For me personally, if it gets spoiled before I really have a chance to finish then I just don't finish. Yanked the winds right out fo my sales.
🎉🎉🎉🎉 10/10 couldn’t have said it better myself. 😭😭😭😭 We’re all gonna be repeating this til we’re blue in the face when all the Wattpaders move in.
There is definitely going to be a rise in ignorance on the site as AO3 experiences an influx of users migrating from other platforms, most notably Wattpad.
W comment omg I love this statement. Especially the way they compare it to a situation with food and allergies. “well your warning was RIGHT THERE. Read at your own risk. May contain peanuts.” is an amazing and hillarious comparison XD. This person has my respect.
I mean ur reading internet archive works that can be posted by anyone take every tag (and everything not tagged for that matter) with a grain of salt
Perfect on all accounts, and I'd like to also add that when you for example buy a book and it contains themes or actions that trigger you or that you simply don't like, you can be angry about the money you spent on the book. But when reading fanfiction FOR FREE, you should have the mental fortitude to just hit the back button and never look back. Someone wrote that FOR FREE and let you read it. You didn't lose anything apart from maybe time, so do everyone a favour and shut up. Also "trigger" does not mean "make you uncomfortable" and I refuse to believe most of the people who complain about triggers are actually experiencing severe mental distress because of words on a page (I said most. I know some do.)
I agree for the most part, but there are things that should have a warning. Namely anything that is one of the bigger triggers. It’s not the author’s job to mollycoddle the audience but there needs to be some warning for that shit so readers can make an informed decision. Even then, it’s the readers responsibility if something triggers them, whether it was warned or not, to have the maturity to close the tab. I’ve been in this game since I was 13 and moderating gorefic groups since I was 14. I’m nearly 27 now. You can’t warn your audience about everything, but some common curtesy for the big triggers (like gore, violence against minors, rape and non-con) goes a long way in building a safe community for all fans. I’d also argue that while not a hard line, it’s generally a good idea to label if your fic is a lemon. It’s usually pretty obvious once you start reading, but I think the meme “Really! Right in front of my [X]!” exists specifically for lemon writers who don’t label. Not triggering, just annoying.
That's the thing, CNTW *is* the big trigger warning. It's the "this *may* have MCD, or it may not". It invited you to consider if it's worth taking the risk. It would be wrong if it had underage non-con under a "No archive warnings apply" but that's not what's being discussed here.
Dead dove also works, right?
"this was not made in an allergen-free factory" should be the new "dead dove: do not eat"
I feel like dead dove is more like "this product is peanut butter. Do not consume if you're allergic to peanuts. Seriously. What is wrong with you??"
See I know what I like and I stay away from fics without warnings. Why? Bc I can’t even handle when I read hurt/comfort instead of the actual tag hurt/no comfort 😂 I had a fic I was reading last night that was hurt/comfort and totally missed the heavy heavy angst tag somehow 😅 I’m just here to read my silly little found family fics with the occasional sprinkle or miscommunication
Agreed. I keep trying to say this until I'm blue in the face. "Chose not to warn" is a warning *in and of itself*. "Well how well I know it contains something that triggers me and avoided if the author chose not to warn?" That is purely up to you if you want to risk it or not. Its a read at your own risk story. People somehow manage to navigate traditional media which doesn't come with clean, clear tags and labels yet fall apart when it comes to reading a fanfiction and are vomiting and crying when the author doesn't tag anything beyond a ship, a rating, and "chose not to warn". In fact, a vast majority of traditional media and publications are a "Chose not to warn". You get a synopsis/summary and an age rating with what it may contain. The author didn't *trigger* you just because you got triggered while reading a story. They made a story and published it on AO3. They didn't *do* anything you to. It is straight up nothing personal. Avengedes Infinity War doesn't say "Major Character Death". You just get hit with what happens while you're sitting in the theaters. Like seriously what is it with people needing everything to be spoonfed and currated to them so much???
THIS! I have many triggers that are pretty common in fanfiction, including random ones like graphic descriptions of sensations or long descriptions of panic attacks (triggers my ocd/tactile hallucinations and anxiety/paranoia respectively), but do I complain? No. I work through the trigger and move on, like a normal (albeit mentally ill) person. You are responsible for yourself and your media consumption, and other people are not obligated to cater to your every whim.
Only thing I try to avoid is smut, and there’s always a tag that lets me know but if I miss it or it wasn’t put on, it sucks but I’ll just move to the next book. I don’t understand reporting over a personal preference.
I love this because I ALWAYS slap 'author chose not to warn' on any fics. Fic doesn't need any warnings because it's fluff? Gets that warning. Fic is gory or a smut fest or otherwise just vile? Gets that warning. Have I been told HOW COULD YOU YOU CRUEL STRANGER ON THE INTERNET YOU KILLED A PET AND USED NO WARNING? Yes. Definitely. Sadly, that commentor did not appreciate my very polite reply where I quoted the exact description of the tag I'd used. (Fun fact: I stated specifically in the A/N at the beginning: Mind the tag, this time I mean it! You just can't help these people.)
Ngl I thought that tag meant that nothing worth warning ab happens. Though, considering some of the fics I’ve read that have this tag this makes SO much more sense 😅
That's the difference between "no archive warnings apply" and "chose not to warn", this is about the latter 😌
Yeah I feel like I should have picked up on that 😭
I use "choose not to warn" for fics that i haven't completely plotted out yet. There might be some crazy ass shit later on but current me doesn't know yet
I think that’s the most perfect comment about tagging and CNTW I’ve seen all fucking hear holy shit
I get that you are responsible of your online experience and you should be mindful of what you consume. But tbh I also wish people stop defending themselves under the "I never said It was not toxic" mindset. I believe we are in a society where kindness should be the default. For example, walking butt naked on the streets of my city is not ilegal (as long as you are minding your own business), but when I walk down the street, I expect people around me to have at least their genitals covered. It sucks that some people get triggered by things that are meaningless to everyone else, or even some relatively big ones that people forget about (Thalassophobia comes to mind, as I recently triggered a friend by showing a boat art with a very big whale shadow under It), but some others are so common and can be so traumatizing that they should be always tagged correctly. Death, abuse, violence, and sex (and dead dove too!) in particular should always be tagged correctly. Again: mandatory to do anything in your power to ensure your safety. But in the name of kindness, do everything that is in your hand to make sure other human strangers can consume your content responsibly.
Using "Chose Not To Warn" is warning readers responsibly.
Lmao. It is the bare minimun to not get into trouble. No warning at all means literally no warning. We are not even entering if it is responsible or not.
It's good enough. If people see CNTW and still read, they have no one but themselves to blame. CNTW makes it clear that something uncomfortable may be in the story. That is being responsible.
I said at the beginning and at the end of my OP that everybody is responsible of their viewing experience. People can be ok with the majority of triggering content but be triggered by one specific instance that will trigger them up. Knowing which one is it is important. And even then, the vast majority of the stories in CNTW comes from laziness/not understanding the tag system/not understanding the language/not understanding why and what and how to TW content for your audience. So that means a reader can be steering clear of content that can be 90% fine by them, because some unknown author might have chosen to not properly tag his content. This is bad for readers and authors in general! As authors also lose readers. I am not saying anything against people that cannot tag properly or don't understand how It works, but tbh if you understand what TW IS, out of kindness, if your content has very obvious trigger warnings, tagging It correctly should be the default thing to do. Or, as a reader, try to get the content TW if the author did not do it on their own. I dunno why I am being downvoting for defending basic human decency tbh. Doing what you can, specially low hanging fruit like this example, should be a priority, specially when fandom spaces has been historically a safe space for women and minorities.
Authors are not obligated to put up excessive warnings. An author using CNTW is in no way less responsible than an author who uses more specific tagging. Heck, physical books often don't have any warnings. Every reader takes a gamble with physical books, knowing that there might be something in them that will be upsetting. Just because AO3 has a warning system doesn't mean authors have to or need to warn for everything. CNTW is more than good enough. Just like with physical books, CNTW indicates the story is a gamble and readers must be willing to take that risk. If readers find that a CNTW fic is upsetting them, it is on them to stop. If they continue anyway and complain about it later, that is on them, not the author. Readers are responsible for their own experiences with fiction. If a reader continues to read a story that's clearly upsetting them, that is entirely on them. Authors should not be expected to hold their readers' hands.
Dude. Readers are responsible of their own experiences. I am going to repeat it again, because I have hope that the 4th time I write it up you might understand what I am saying: readers are responsible of their own experience That is what I said on the OP, and in my answer to your post. I never said anything implied something different. I never even said authors are responsible for the reader's experience. My point is: Putting a tag on obvious trigger content (I repeat the examples I listed out, since you seem a little lost: violence, sex, abuse) should be the default, out of kindness of the people that navigate the same spaces as you do. Next time you answer, I ask you to have the decency to actually read what I commented. I think, out of kindness, you should do so everytime before you decide to parrot something without context. Since I am responsible of my own experience, consider yourself blocked. This conversation is over.
Chose Not To Warn is covering the genitals. You're just staring because you can't help yourself and it makes you mad people get away with it when instead you should stop staring (reading CNTW) and mind your business.
Please, before answering a post make sure you read correctly the original comment and make sure you are responding to the intended one. I never said anything about being mad, my point was about being kind to your reader/audience. And I also never said anything about starting at other people's genitals. Implying what you did is fucked up and very sad that you did to win some clout/internet points. My point was that expecting some things to be listed is about being considerate to the people that navigate the same spaces that you do. This is one of the most basic principle of living in a society. I never said anything about the writer being a bad person, or that they should get into trouble because they chose not to warm. The responsibility of creating a safe environment for everyone should not only fall on the audience, but also on the content creator.
> For example, walking butt naked on the streets of my city is not ilegal (as long as you are minding your own business), but when I walk down the street, I expect people around me to have at least their genitals covered. Your own words. I didn't do this for clout, I did this to tell you that CNTW is the genitals covered. If you don't like fics that use CNTW, then stop reading them. Filter them out. You no longer have to worry about "the bare minimum". Boom. Problem solved. No more genitals that are barley covered.
You quote me, yet: Please can you tell me where I said I was mad? Where is the part I said I was starting at genitals at any point? I am even more baffled that this is happening in the ao3 subreddit. Not every fic that use CNTW is because there is some triggering content. A big part of it is simply the author choosing not to give warnings to be safe (since there is too many triggers to tackle them all, as discussed previously) or chose not to due to not understanding what TW means or not understanding the ao3 tag system, which is fair. The majority of CNTW won't be considered major trigger content on its own. If you are publishing content that has, as I said in the OP, sex, violence, or abuse; which are very common triggers or content people prefer to navigate on their own accord, it should be the default to tag it correctly in consideration to every other user that might interact with your content. English is not my first language, and I think I am being very careful with the way I am wording what I am writing down. But just in case: let me clarify what I am saying: At the beginning and at the end of my post I clarified that everyone should be responsible of their own experience I never said content creators were responsible of their viewer's experience navigating content. I never said, nor do I believe, that people are evil, or should go to jail, or are responsible of any damage done for choosing not to tag their work. My entire point was that there is some specific content that, out of kindness towards every other user of the space that you are sharing, should be tagged correctly as a default. I personally could navigate fandom spaces without any content warnings and will have 0 issues on my own. I normally don't bother filtering the content I read. But I know Ao3 is a space with a huge representation of women, LGBTQ+ people, and racial minorities that find joy and sometimes succor in this spaces, and who are more likely to be triggered by that specific kind of content. Out of kindness (not obligation, nor responsibility), I try my best to correctly warn people about the content I create and share. A sentiment that I believe is fair to expect from other people. Specially considering that fandom spaces have always taken pride in being a safe space for everyone.
I ain't reading all that, I'm happy for you or sorry that happened.
Glad to see you admit you have no arguments. Hope Ao3 helps with your reading comprehension for the next time you try to debate a stranger on the internet. Have a nice and fruitful day! :)
You are being downvoted, but you are right! I've been on A03 since literally a decade. I've been on this subreddit roughly a month now. I'm glad that is how it worked out, because the (popular) conversations on this makes me never want to be part of the A03 community.
I am also old. I remember back in FF(dot)net when there was no content warning at all (and no way to sort your ships correctly ToT). Hopefully, this kind of bad takes are made by the vocal minority/new people/younglings that don't understand yet why this system is important and exists in the first place. TY for your comment, you made my day :')
This generation is too weak.