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edenfalling13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
Canon. Sometimes fanfiction helps me figure out what I think about canon -- as I said in my response to question 7, I often do my meta thinking in story form. Once I have pinned down a piece of backstory or world-building to my own satisfaction, I tend to reuse it in future stories involving that character, place, or event, but since I draw those ideas from canon rather than from other people's stories, I am not sure it counts as fanon. (Personal fanon, maybe?)
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14 – Ratings: how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?
I have no problem whatsoever writing horrific violence, torture, and other things of that nature. I have extreme trouble writing explicit sex, not because I have any moral qualms, but because I get horribly embarrassed and because I almost never construct stories in which the sex is important to the plot or character arcs. (The fact that people have sex -- and the identities of their sexual partners -- may be important, but the details of the encounters are not.) Violence is much more likely to be plot-relevant.
The closest I have come to NC-17 is Parseltongue, a short fic in which two unnamed characters have heterosexual intercourse using live snakes as aids to their foreplay. I wrote it mostly as an experiment to explore my own boundary between erotica and squick, and even there the actual sex fades to black. Aside from that fic, any sex I write tends to be over within two to four not-very-detailed paragraphs, or it fades to black near the end of foreplay.
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15 – Warnings: what do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
Let me start by unpicking one of the assumptions behind this question. First, I do believe in warnings. I had always thought it was polite to give people a heads-up about content they would rather avoid, though I admit I was very haphazard about what I considered potentially upsetting. When I was made aware that reading about certain actions and themes can act as a trigger -- can, in other words, set off flashbacks, physical discomfort, or what-have-you -- there was no way I could justify potentially causing that sort of easily avoidable harm. I mean, if nothing else you can slap a "I don't like warnings and my stories may contain disturbing content; please do X (highlight hidden spoilers, jump to notes in a separate post, contact the author, etc.) if you want more information about this particular story" note on something if you'd rather not give away details to all and sundry.
I am aware that the idea of putting warnings on a story is in itself disturbing to some people, and I am not going to charge around insisting everyone act the way I have decided to act. I am simply saying that for me, none of the arguments against warnings outweigh the basic principle of trying not to harm others.
Anyway.
I warn for explicit sex (well, "mildly" or "moderately" explicit sex, generally speaking), torture, rape, incest, societal and familiar dysfunction, slavery, extreme violence, and depression and/or suicidal ideation. Those last I warn for because I know I can write myself into the negative spirals that kicked off some of my depressive episodes -- sort of a mild self-trigger. I have never spiraled down because of something I read, but I am sure it's possible and anyway, there are times when the last thing I'd want to read about is someone else going through that kind of mess. I think I have also warned for death of major canon characters, though perhaps surprisingly, I have only committed that sort of murder offscreen.
The strangest things I've warned for are literary analysis, discussion of theology, and blasphemy (against the versions of Christianity most commonly received in the USA), which I think says a lot more about my own preoccupations than about the likely sensitivities of my hypothetical readers. *wry* I also warn for crack, mostly so readers will be in the correct mindset from the start of a story.
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Work was boring today. PM, MS, and I got everything done so efficiently that PM left half an hour early and I left 45 minutes early, abandoning RE to staff the smoke shop alone from 5:15 until closing. I love when things work out like that. :-)
Canon. Sometimes fanfiction helps me figure out what I think about canon -- as I said in my response to question 7, I often do my meta thinking in story form. Once I have pinned down a piece of backstory or world-building to my own satisfaction, I tend to reuse it in future stories involving that character, place, or event, but since I draw those ideas from canon rather than from other people's stories, I am not sure it counts as fanon. (Personal fanon, maybe?)
-----
14 – Ratings: how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?
I have no problem whatsoever writing horrific violence, torture, and other things of that nature. I have extreme trouble writing explicit sex, not because I have any moral qualms, but because I get horribly embarrassed and because I almost never construct stories in which the sex is important to the plot or character arcs. (The fact that people have sex -- and the identities of their sexual partners -- may be important, but the details of the encounters are not.) Violence is much more likely to be plot-relevant.
The closest I have come to NC-17 is Parseltongue, a short fic in which two unnamed characters have heterosexual intercourse using live snakes as aids to their foreplay. I wrote it mostly as an experiment to explore my own boundary between erotica and squick, and even there the actual sex fades to black. Aside from that fic, any sex I write tends to be over within two to four not-very-detailed paragraphs, or it fades to black near the end of foreplay.
-----
15 – Warnings: what do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
Let me start by unpicking one of the assumptions behind this question. First, I do believe in warnings. I had always thought it was polite to give people a heads-up about content they would rather avoid, though I admit I was very haphazard about what I considered potentially upsetting. When I was made aware that reading about certain actions and themes can act as a trigger -- can, in other words, set off flashbacks, physical discomfort, or what-have-you -- there was no way I could justify potentially causing that sort of easily avoidable harm. I mean, if nothing else you can slap a "I don't like warnings and my stories may contain disturbing content; please do X (highlight hidden spoilers, jump to notes in a separate post, contact the author, etc.) if you want more information about this particular story" note on something if you'd rather not give away details to all and sundry.
I am aware that the idea of putting warnings on a story is in itself disturbing to some people, and I am not going to charge around insisting everyone act the way I have decided to act. I am simply saying that for me, none of the arguments against warnings outweigh the basic principle of trying not to harm others.
Anyway.
I warn for explicit sex (well, "mildly" or "moderately" explicit sex, generally speaking), torture, rape, incest, societal and familiar dysfunction, slavery, extreme violence, and depression and/or suicidal ideation. Those last I warn for because I know I can write myself into the negative spirals that kicked off some of my depressive episodes -- sort of a mild self-trigger. I have never spiraled down because of something I read, but I am sure it's possible and anyway, there are times when the last thing I'd want to read about is someone else going through that kind of mess. I think I have also warned for death of major canon characters, though perhaps surprisingly, I have only committed that sort of murder offscreen.
The strangest things I've warned for are literary analysis, discussion of theology, and blasphemy (against the versions of Christianity most commonly received in the USA), which I think says a lot more about my own preoccupations than about the likely sensitivities of my hypothetical readers. *wry* I also warn for crack, mostly so readers will be in the correct mindset from the start of a story.
-----
Work was boring today. PM, MS, and I got everything done so efficiently that PM left half an hour early and I left 45 minutes early, abandoning RE to staff the smoke shop alone from 5:15 until closing. I love when things work out like that. :-)
