(no subject)

[lyssie]

I don't get it. I still think fooling people into reading something with a bad ending by omitting a warning is mean.

...y'know... there's just nothin' I can say to that.

Stark Incomprehension all round, lads?

Comments

Re: Er.

[splash-the-cat.livejournal.com]

It's the sense of expectation and entitlement that has developed among readers that pisses me off about the topic. Many readers now see that it is the writers' responsibility to protect them from things they do not want, and to make their lives more convenient in avoiding what they don't want and finding what they do want.

No, that isn't my responsibility. My job is not to protect the reader. It isn't even so much an issue of consideration. It's a question of accepting one's own responsibility for one's own choices. And pawning that responsibility off on the writer comes across as pretty damn discourteous. I get that side, I get their issue. I just don't see how it is my problem.

And implying that a fic writer is responsible to add a warning that a story is depressing to protect a reader because they might be clinically depressed or because their fic might be a mood trigger? That's just ridiculous. That is putting an unbelievably out-of-line expectation on a writer, and frankly, comes across as a guilt trip.

And too, for every reader out there who wants to be warned about potentially sensitive topics (i.e. character deaths, sad endings, pairings not getting together), there's another reader who doens't want to be warned for it. Why does the sensitive reader have more rights than the reader who doesn't want to be spoiled or warned?