cap_ironman | Archive housekeeping post

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Archive housekeeping post

In light of the recent discussion/argument over warnings going on in wider fandom:

If any of y'all have any suggestions, criticism, or comments on the warnings and genre tags and other metadata at the Tales of Suspense website/archive (a tag you would like to see included, an issue with the way something is currently being labeled or warned for), please feel free to either comment here about it or to PM or email myself or seanchai.

ToS currently has a list of optional warning tags, with two mandatory-warning exceptions: major character death (yes, even if it's Steve's death that happened in canon, and no, I don't care if that's silly) and non-con/rape.

The non-con/rape warning is mandatory both because issues of consent in general and onscreen rape in particular can be major triggers for surviors of sexual abuse or assault, and because several people on the comm specifically asked for such a warning on the site.

A generic "Kink!" tag is currently included on the ToS archive's list of warnings. I am considering altering that, and making a seperate metadata category for kinks, because several people have said during the ongoing warnings/triggers discussion currently going on in wider fandom that they dislike it when authors lump consensual sex acts in with death/abuse/assault. We'd also welcome y'all's opinions on that, as well as any suggestions on specific kinks you'd like to have the option of labelling for.

edit: Things already on the warnings list (all warnings that don't have "mandatory" next to them are 100% optional):
cancer
character death: OTP (mandatory)
character death: other
dub-con
graphic violence
kink! (becoming it's own new section, so it won't be on the warnings list anymore)
mpreg
rape (mandatory)

Things suggested as additional warnings:
torture
brain damage
sexual violence
drug abuse
eating disorders
suicide

Things suggested for kinks list:
amnesia
mpreg (moved over from warnings)
bondage
D/s
genderswap
s/m
maybe some generic kink tag for people that want to advertise that a story contains kinky sex without spelling everything out?

Note: this is warnings for the Tales of Suspense archive, not for the comm.

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separating into;

bondage: where someone is restrained

D/s: where is there is obvious D/s dynamic, like Steve ordering Tony around

s/m: sadomachoism: biting and bruising. It's usually lumped BDSM, but there is a separate D/s and bondage tag, and I read canon Steve/Tony as having a lot of s/m minus the other two...the physical fighting..

...and h/c already have its own tag eh? Along with non-con

Thanks! I was considering moving the narrative kinks (like mpreg, and any others people might suggest, like genderswap or amnesia and so on) out of the warnings and into the kink section as well. So, thus far we have: mpreg, bondage, D/s, s/m, genderswap.

Thanks, those things are like peanut butter chocolate and ice cream, good together, but can be had separately, with very different feeling when do.

Like, bondage can be light fun without any D/s and s/m. They are Avengers. Tony gives Dr.Strange's weird looking housetree a pet, and it turns out it's a guard tree and it restrains him. Everyone laughs and goes to get Dr.Strange, but Steve tells Dr.Strange they can wait a bit.

"You've always wanted to try it outdoors Tony, is against a tree close enough?"

"In Dr.Strange house? Why isn't it grabbing you? I hate magic."

I think there might already be a tag for this, but if there's not, could I request a tag for torture, be it physical or psychological? I personally have no issue reading such fics, but I can easily see why someone would want to avoid it.

There's a tag for graphic violence, which I suppose torture could fall under, but no tag for torture. I'll add it to the list.

Thankee kindly.

I agree with the previous comments, and also want to thank you for starting this discussion. Personally, I'm of the opinion that warnings should be about as subtle as a brick to the face, and the fact that this even needs to be a issue is astounding. But since it does, I just wanted to that you. Also, I don't think warning for Steve's death is silly. :) I still appreciate it, because it still hurts, and that's the reason for a warning.

Damn, I've only just caught up with the wank. Wow, a LOT of fail is going on there.

I don't know about tags really. I do know that I wouldn't call my stories angst, nor fluff or whatever. But that's just me unable to define my stories rather than you guys and your lack of tags.

I've been watching it for the past week going O.o. One person's post about 'warnings' for BDSM and how she wasn't comfortable with people treating her RL sexuality as a Bad Thing to Be Warned For like rape did start me thinking about having a seperate category to list kinks, though -- though the fact that dub-con and non-con are themselves kinks for some people muddies the waters some.

We could add a "general" or "undefined" tag to the genres section, like ff.net has, maybe, for people who are struggling to fit their fic into the pre-existing categories (you can also select multiple variables for the genre field).

Well yes, I think warnings and tags and stuf is a good idea, specially because sometimes it is pretty usefull.

I say sometimes because most of the time I just don't read the warnings, I welcome every surprise, however sometimes I don't feel like facing certain kind of stuff, and a warning is always a nice way to avoid it.

No, I don't think there's such a thing as a silly or useless warning or tag, I just think that sometimes it is kinda hard to say that a something, let's say a fic, can be related to a certain tag, but that's just sometimes.

I wouldn't mind seeing a warning for sexual violence (Not rape, but threats of rape, sexual harassment, sexual assault and so on). I'm not sure if you'd want to break that down or not. Also, child abuse, sexual or otherwise.

I'm so glad that we're talking about this civilly and no one's freaking out. I <3 this fandom.

As for tags and warnings, I particularly like the way they have things organized over at the Prydonian (a Doctor/Master archive: http://www.prydonian.net/browse.php?type=titles).
Fics are tagged with both genre and warnings. It's true that they have mpreg and BDSM/bondage/domination things on the warning list, which I know bothers some people, but when you stop to look at it, the "warnings" are less a list of bad-nasty things, and more a list of things some people want a heads-up about before they choose to read. I mean, "warnings" also includes non-primary pairings, mind control and threesomes, which they certainly aren't condemning.
Perhaps organizing might be easier if instead of looking at things from a bad (warnings) vs okay (tags) perspective, which I'm not saying you are, per say, but that's a pretty common way to do it, things were organized in terms of story themes (fluff, darkfic, romance) and things people commonly want a heads-up about (kink, mpreg, death, threesomes) with some things mandatory to mention (like rape/abuse and character death). Maybe it's a matter of connotation and terminology? That's obvs just a suggestion to consider.
I think things have always been handled very well in this fandom and I have the utmost faith that things will turn out okay with a minimum of wank however they turn out!
(This is officially the longest comment I've ever written. And I've written comment!fic. Haha.)

There's another great thing about kink and warning tags; being able to search for them specifically! In that vein, I say the more the merrier on the tags. For the people who don't want to list kinks or content for lit reasons, you might try offering a special tag that says that "This piece may contain content ordinarily tagged or warned for," so that people can go into fics with their eyes open.

Anyway, that's my lurkish input.

If you click on one of the tags, it should in theory pull up all stories with that tag. It took great strength of will not to have about sixty of them and make them double as subject-descriptor tags when I figured that out.

Considering that the Big Two of rape and major character death are mandatory... offering the option of an "I don't warn" tag would be misleading, I think (in that I suspect people would start not using the two mandatory tags if they had that tag as an excuse not to).

(deleted comment)

SECOND. Yes pls

Added them to the list.

Good gods! Just finished reading all of the epic amount of appall with my jaw resting on my knees. I love you guys. Seriously. Look at you all, with your polite, lovely ways and your winning amounts of win... and the way you all listen to each other... and the way you don't try to armchair psychoanalyse RL rape victims to emotionally blackmail them into thinking their dissentient opinions are because of their egos...

Wow. Anyway, the new warnings list is already shaping up well, and I think even if it doesn't apply to this comm if I ever get around to actually posting here again I'll probably follow it anyway. Incidentally, I second your suggestion for a Genero-Kink tag; I think there are a lot of kinks that are just a bit too pointlessly minor to be listing them, like finger-sucking or novel use of feathers or what have you (although, wow, that's given me a strange mental image.)

I've been scratching my head trying to think of things that haven't been said yet (and gosh, it's hard after you've caught the obvious ones; mostly I only realise an issue bothers me when I'm reading it), and currently the only thing I can think of is incest (not that it comes up much in this fandom anyway). But would that be a kink 'cos it's sexual, or a warning?

...I was wondering whether to ask for a general angst warning for depressing themes (Tony in particular being known for brooding/having an unhealthy mental outlook which can make for some really dark fic, even when there's nothing concrete to warn for) as there are times when reading a story with a dark POV can skew my own mood for the rest of the day and sometimes into the next; then I realised it's already catered for under genre! Out of curiosity, is genre a mandatory field that authors have to use when they're uploading fics?

Also, thanks for linking us to the wankery. There are some really special arguments going on in a couple of places, aren't there? And there are a lot of people that I don't think are actually reading back what they're typing before they click the "Post Comment" button *rolls eyes*.

P.S. Outside of the metadata discussion, is it possible to add a "Whole Story" button to the archive, so we can read, print or save a multi-chaptered fic as a single piece? Only I like being able to download stories to my PDA (for things like travelling, doctor's appointments and the like), and with a nice satisfying epic, it can take quite a while to do the chapters individually!

The only things that *have* to be filled in or the archive won't let you upload are title, summary, and rating. You can leave the warnings, genres, and universe info fields blank and still upload (otherwise, people whose fic had nothing in it to warn for wouldn't have been able to leave the warning field blank).

Genre and universe are optional, as are most of the warnings (rape and "Steve or Tony dies or is dead in this fic" are the only mandatory ones, though they're mandatory in a "because we say so" sense, not a "because the site coding compells you" sense).

is it possible to add a "Whole Story" button to the archive, so we can read, print or save a multi-chaptered fic as a single piece?

I don't know (I can't do CSS code, which is why the metadata is my job) but

seanchai is going to look into it, because that's a really good idea.

For the stories with the higher ratings, is there anyway that they can be 'shielded' from internet eyes?

I'm pretty sure there is; I can implement an age statement, which will require users to verify that they are over the age of consent in order to read any fic rated over a certain level. I didn't think of it when the archive first started because we didn't have much porn then, but that's a really good idea.

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Archive housekeeping post

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O_0

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Uhmm

Good Idea

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Hello!

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