Subject: I prefer to think of it as a keyword rather than a warning.
Author:
Posted on: 2010-04-19 00:37:00 UTC
That way, people who don't want to read it don't have to, and people who do can find it more easily when browsing.
I've always thought that the summary you give to your story is rather like the description on a menu in a resturant.
What sounds better Fish and Chips, or Line caught Cod in Beer batter, served with thick overn cooked chips?
Personally I'd prefer the sound of the second one, so why oh why do so many authors give their stories summaries like "Lol, I reely suck at summeries, just read it 'k!"
Now to me that is like advertising your story as Reclaimed blobs of white fish, glued together with starch and deep fried, with microwaved bits of reformed potato. Not making me want to read the story at all.
So what in a summary makes you click the back button on your browser? For me, quite apart from any of my personal dislikes it is the presence of the phrases "I suck at summaries" and "plz r&r, no flames" both of which leave me cold.
"Randomness!"
"Crack fic!"
"LOL!"
"Not a mary-sue!"
"You'll just have to read and see!"
Advertising one's story as "randomness" or "crackfic" usually indicates not a weird, silly, funny story but a lot of stupid stuff and inane jokes.
* Sue/Cannon Love Interest
* "What if...?"
* One word
* Not having anything to do with the story
* Vally-girl speak
Question: If the summary is in Vally-girl speak, and it promises Sue/Canon love interest (sometimes with the phrase "Try it out," when we most certainly don't want to)...then the Sue is going to be a Vally-girl.
*shudder*
A sick part of me actually wants to read a fic like that and MST it.
Anything involving chat- or leetspeak makes me cringe, as does obvious misspellings. ALLCAPS are also out. As for actual content, I severely dislike anything that says something of the lines of 'wait and see' or rhetorical questions such as 'will they or won't they?'
Interestingly, I don't mind listed pairings. And please, please give spoiler or squick warnings, authors.
This is especially important to new fanfic readers. I stumbled into some awful stuff before I figured out what was between the lines on the summaries. Even now, I much appreciate a nice bold, in the summary, warning for things like shipping, slash, and various things that can be considered squicky.
I really like the slash warnings to be obvious, because my favorite stories are friendship stories between characters frequently slashed.
I actually hate slash warnings. I find them to be inherently homophobic, or at least support homophobia, because of the implication that homosexuality is something that needs to be warned about. It shouldn't be. A romance story is a romance story whatever the genders of the characters involved, and I hate that people treat slash as different from het in any way.
... it's probably better to clearly delineate Slash at the beginning. It's unfortunate but slash is still a more 'deviant' genre than hetero (which is assumed to be the default).
That way you only get people reading the story who actually know what's coming, so story writers aren't inundated in comments about how they hate slash.
Well, I am an idealist.
Also, not a lot of people read my stuff, so I'm not inundated with anything.
That way, people who don't want to read it don't have to, and people who do can find it more easily when browsing.
I mean, you have a point, but I don't like treating the things differently.
It depends entirely on what is the dominant expectation for the characters involved.
Atticus, in the Ukiah Oregon books, has a canonical appreciation of women, but his long-term relationship with Ru means that if I were reading a fanfic and Atticus was paired with a woman, I would darn well want a het warning.
In NCIS, where Gibbs has been married four times, and dated several women during the course of the show, and where Tony has dated dozens of women, including one very seriously, and neither of them has ever talked about men, I expect some indication that they are going to be involved with men, however that indication is accomplished, whether through the romance genre tag, good story summary, or an explicit slash warning.
Hey, just had a thought here. These two men are also not dating their female co-workers in canon. If the author has them dating one of their female co-workers, I fully expect them to let me know that up front, too. So, I really do expect het warnings as well, they just usually come in the form of annoying mish-mashes of the names involved. Jiva, Tiva, Jibbs! I'd a whole lot rather just see HET! and the character's names listed in the Character A, Character B slots. Let's go on a campaign together to get people to list HET! when they put canons in male/female relationships. Then you'll see the word Het, and I won't see the stupid name mish-mashes in place of the word het.
Huh. Well, that would at least be fair, certainly, and it is a good point.
The remaining question is, in that case, do you still use any kind of tag for a canon couple?
Well, I just read fanfic, I don't write it, but I want a warning for any relationship that isn't going on in canon. If it is one that has been in canon, but in later seasons is no more, then I still want a warning for that, unless the story is already marked as being set in that time frame.
If it is a solid canon relationship, then if there were no warnings I would think that is what the story was going to include. I wouldn't want a warning for a story that had Leia and Han together. I would want a warning on a story that had Han and anyone else together or Leia and anyone else together. That holds for canon male/male or female/female relationships. I would not expect a warning for a Ukiah Oregon story that had Atticus and Ru, or Ukiah's moms together. (There should be more Ukiah Oregon :( fanfic!)
If I were there to read about characters in a canonical homosexual relationship, I would not expect a warning. Since I am there to read about characters who are canonically very heterosexual, I expect a warning that they will be portrayed very differently than they are in canon.
I did not include slash under my examples for squick. There are times when I enjoy reading slash, even about the characters I was talking about earlier. Some of the stories that are on my favorites list are slash of those characters. However, in canon, they are portrayed pretty strongly as het. I expect the slash warning to let me know that this story is going to be trying to do a good job of convincing me that canon was missing something. If the characters were in a homosexual relationship in canon, I would expect warnings if the author put them in het relationships.
That's a point, but the thing is, how many characters are actually, specifically stated to be exclusively straight? (Putting them in a heterosexual romantic relationship does not count, and if you say it does the bisexuals of the world would like a word with you. Obviously there needs to be a plausible explanation of why the love interest isn't present, though.) Also, it's not really "very differently" to portray them as gay (unless the author is adding in gay stereotypes, mannerisms, etc, in which case they are doing it wrong). It's just an extension to who they're attracted to.
Also, on some sections of the Pit, slash warnings can be pretty redundant anyway. "Character A: Johny McMasculine. Character B: Harry von AlsoMale. Genre tag: Romance. Hmm, I think it's totally het." On LJ or something (I think, I'm less familiar with it), it's of course a different story.
On LJ, at least in most of the fic comms I subscribe to, it depends on the header.
Title: Example A
Genre: Angst
Characters: John Doe/Dr Smith
or
Title: Example B
Genre: Angst
Characters: John Doe, Dr Smith
That's my favourite sort of header. A slash denotes romantic involvement and a comma shows that both characters are present but not paired together. Some people miss out the genre line. Other people have a pairings line instead of a characters one, especially if it's a PWP.
I am mostly reading at the pit, and the warnings help me avoid these types of stories: "Characters A and B had been dating and making public displays of affection toward one another while at work in their jobs as officers in the US military.(even though, Character B doesn't even make public displays of affection in his het canonical relationships) And now our story begins." Or this type of story: "Yes we are 15,000 words into this story, and no, I haven't so much as mentioned that Characters A and B are in a relationship, but this entire chapter is a lemon that has nothing to do with, and was not foreshadowed by, the plot." (Actually, I would expect a warning for either slash or het in that case.) Or this one, and the one that I really like the warnings to be there to help me avoid, "Character A is a strong, mature, masculine guy. Because Characters A and B are dating, I am going to completely emasculate him and turn him into a simpering, needy shell of himself."
Really, now that I think about it more, I use the SLASH. DON'T LIKE--DON'T READ type warnings as part of the code that tells me this is most likely going to fall into one of those story types above that I want to avoid, and not some well thought out, well written, treatise on what canon failed to show us. I take them as a convenient Pit shorthand that indicates that the likelihood of this story being badly written is even higher than normal for the pit. Stories that are well written tend to have a summary that is well written and makes their relationship choices obvious, so they don't require a SLASH warning for people who don't want to read slash to be able to avoid the story.
As long as it continues to serve that function as pit shorthand for me, I am going to continue to appreciate its presence.
So, basically, what you want is a bad slash warning, not a slash warning.
Yes. I want a perfect system, and I want it now, dagnabbit! ;) lol
Seriously, though, at least for the pit, I have found this a pretty valuable indicator of bad slash. And I would much rather they identify themselves, so I can hurry up the winnowing process of finding a good story.
(NOTE: most of these are for summaries on ff.net, which are 48 words)
Things that make me go "huh?" in reviews are:
- not being able to polish 48 words to perfection
- stating that your story isn't a Mary-Sue/her XY counterpart
- announcing a pairing in the summary (and really, do any of these stories need badly written romance?)
- bad grammar
- bad spelling
- asking for reviews (I think that's just tacky in a summary)
- asking questions in the summary that are never answered later (a la "Hogan's Daughter" by Beanacre0)
-putting in a website blurb
---putting in a website blurb that has nothing to do with your story (and yes, I have seen this done a few times)
- casually dismissing canon
. . .
and I'm going to stop before I crash the website . . .
I'm rather rabid about summaries, good or bad. What can I say (blame Tirathon here, it's a bad habit I got from her)?
-H_W
Things that make me go huh?
"Not a Mary Sue!!"
Misspelling or misusing any words.
Chatspeak.
Giving info on other stories or life events
Saying 'this isn't a summary' or 'I suck at summaries'
* Just in anyway completely replacing the summary with something else.*
Insulting the canon characters gets me every time.
I am pretty forgiving of grammar errors, because my own grammar isn't great. However, if the grammar is so bad in the summary that I am cringing, it is usually a cause for backing away--not always, if it otherwise sounds like it could be intriguing, I might go ahead and give it a try.