#like—i’ve genuinely seen so many people (again. mainly younger ones) deliberately read fics that aren’t suited for them

[padfootastic]

i feel like such a boomer even thinking it but i often compare the current fandom experience to mine just a few years ago and it’s so—baffling? vaguely terrifying? concerning???

like, reader entitlement is at such an all time high; people (esp the younger crowd) refuse to take responsibility for their own actions & reading habits; they need everything spelled out & their hand held for them like—where does it end?

if i have MCD on my fic, i shouldn’t be expected to disclose who/when/why just to go appease some sensitive countenance somewhere. its kinda ridiculous how people are getting away w trying to demand this too.

when u read a fic, one that’s tagged but also especially one that’s untagged—u are doing so at ur own risk. if u think u have certain triggers/squicks that might not work w it, it’s ur responsibility to click out and move somewhere else. do not go whining in the author’s spaces or bitch about it on social media ffs.

something else that i have been thinking abt since writing the cowboy fic is that like. i feel like. there is sort of this....very intense expectation when it comes to warnings on fics? and i feel like this is a post-tiktok shift simply bc i don't see it as much w older fics but. what i mean is like.

the tags are where tws/cws go, right? like, the general expectation is that if there is potentially upsetting content, the writer will do their best to tag it so that people know going into the fic to expect violence or angst etc etc. and it is the responsibility of the reader to check those tags before reading and decide if they're okay with encountering that potentially upsetting material. which is a great system!

but i feel like now there's this growing expectation that writers will not only tag their fics, but also include detailed warnings in the notes on each chapter. and like.....i think that is a very kind gesture from writers who want to do it, but it shouldn't be an expectation. it isn't a writer's responsibility to provide warnings on every single chapter of a fic. like, if the fic is tagged with something like "violence" or "injury" or "gore," you as a reader are opening that fic with the blanket acknowledgment that you are prepared for any kind of violence/injury/gore that it might contain. and you aren't entitled to any more detailed warnings on the actual chapter where those things occur. y'know?

and yeah, sometimes you'll open a fic tagged with something thinking u can handle it, and then you'll get to that part of the story and find it more upsetting than u expected. that happens! but that's just part of like...the Big Kid Reading Experience, y'know? it's not the writer's responsibility to protect u from a story that u chose to read.

anyway, i just feel like i am increasingly witnessing (and every so often being subjected to lol) this phenomenon of people reading a fic tagged with various warnings and then acting surprised or even upset with the writer because.....they were surprised that the fic tagged "violence" was violent. or that the fic tagged "angst" was sad. or that the fic tagged "canon-compliant" was canon-compliant. and then if they're called on their bs they'll hand-wring and act like the tag on the fic wasn't enough, because they weren't expecting the violence to be that violent, or the angst to be that sad, and they'll act as though the writer has done something wrong by not giving a step-by-step breakdown in the notes on each chapter of every single potentially upsetting detail....which is just ridiculous!

anyway. tl;dr - nobody is entitled to detailed, in-depth tws on every single fic ch; the writers who do that are just being extra nice to u, so stop treating it as some sort of standard expectation!