Question General ratings/awareness tags?

Someone made a comment over on BCTS about the possibility of "All the Kings Horses" maybe being of concern for those with PTSD issues. While the post was couched in some generally anti-Crystal Hall language, about how we don't handle unregistered comments, etc... I think the actual concern merits a little discussion and a decision.

For the most part, we have always operated under the principle that we write within a pretty specific genre and only rarely do we reach far enough outside our normal styles and plot lines that we need the sort of warning signs a site that will post anything from children's stories to hardcore smut might require.The one or two times we have stepped outside that line, we've ensured there are disclaimers ("Tennyo Goes to Hell" being an example). So... the question on the floor is... do we feel that there is merit in setting up a system of tags by which stories can be marked to give a reader advance warning of potential trigger conditions. And, if so... what exactly constitutes the conditions that we consider far enough outside of business as usual that we need to tag it?

To use "All the Kings Horses" as the case in point, as it was the story that resulted in the comment... what specifically do we look at in this story as triggering? How is it, in relation to the prior story "Odds and Ends", a problem... both stories are full of active paranormal combat scenes. So we post for violence/PTSD trigger in every story that has a fight in it? Isn't that overkill when you consider that super powered battles are inherently violent but just as inherently a part of the genre. If that sort of fighting doesn't appeal, you simply don't read comics. Or by extension, super hero stories.

It isn't difficult for me to generate tags for this purpose. It WILL be pretty time consuming to make the entire story collection 'compliant' to a standard if we set one (though it isn't a task that 'has' to be done by me). But the tags will only really be valuable if everyone uses them and that requires everyone to understand and agree on the point at which they are necessary. And, ideally, I can set them up in a way that they don't act as a spoiler for stories...

The majority of these posts run pretty close to my own feelings on the subject and about what I expected from the active, vocal part of the community... that said, a couple notes:

IF we were to implement a tag system, I believe I could come up with a way that they were invisible by default. That people who were concerned about potential triggers could have a way to toggle them on/off at the top of a story without them being visible to everyone and causing spoilers. So don't worry about that factor as an issue.

I'm more concerned about SCOPE: what triggers do we try to account for? violence? difficult to do in a genre based on conflict. sexual stuff? WA by nature of our coming at things from a TG fiction standpoint tends to handle issues of sex far more often than a typical high school drama might. Not unrealistically... but even just talking about TG transformations could be problematic for someone who is not coming at the stories from the perspective of being TG or a TG supporter. And a lot of 'mainstream' folks could be upset by having teens consciously aware of being gay or lesbian. That's ALL about sex. Rape? Murders/deaths of friends? Ya... those can be upsetting to a lot of people. But how do we tag those?

And DEPTH: Do tag every story that has Kayda in it because she was raped? Or just the stories that specifically contain the scene where she was raped or a flashback to it? Or any time the subject is rape as part of the story - such as when she is working with Sky and Cav? If we are tagging violence, do we have separate scales for emotional conflict and physical? Do we have to have levels of violence to show the difference between a sparring match that gets out of hand and a fight that ends with someone in the hospital?


I appreciate some tagging systems, and I do check them on sites like Fictionmania and BCTS... not because I worry about running across something that will squick me... but because I have some categories of things that I don't enjoy and would rather not waste my time reading - forced fem stuff, for instance, doesn't generally appeal to me. I 'want' to be female, and I don't see being turned female to be a punishment. At the same time, I very much dislike the idea of someone being 'made' TG... and that's exactly what you get if you take a non TG male and force him into being a woman.

But that's useful because those are open sites and any given story has a pretty wild range of potential quality, style, subject, and issues... the Crystal Hall has some range within the genre, but that range is generally not one that changes a lot. About half the stories could be tagged mild violence/bullying. and another 20% with violence resulting in injury. About 20% of stories could be tagged with mild adult/sexual subjects with another 10% with serious adult/sexual subjects. Probably 5% of stories deal with some degree of rape. 5% with some degree of murder/death. 5% with suicide.

*shrug*

I'm still undecided what to do. Feel free to continue the conversation in the meantime.

Exactly.

When in school for theatre, we were required on numerous occasions to discuss or write out our artistic aesthetic. While I used more eloquent phrasing, most of the time my comments could be boiled down to the idea that "if I'm not managing to offend someone, I'm not succeeding as an artist"

Meaning, of course, in more modern language... that the whole basis for art is to trigger people. The Greeks tried to create plays that were so tragic that everyone would be appalled, horrified, and shocked that such a terrible end could happen out of simple choices and desires that any human being might make/have. This created such a huge emotional reaction that it gave them a form of release (catharsis) from their normal worldly cares.

The artist in me says that we should avoid warning people... that our goal should be the opposite. That if we want to help create healthy human beings, we should be purposely writing to trigger people. That by exposure, they will come to cope with those things that currently cripple their actions and hinder them emotionally.

But I also know that the Greeks had a tighter community... and if someone pushed into darkness in an attempt to reach catharsis didn't come out the other side 'better'... they wouldn't be alone, without support or someone to help find the way back. All too many people who would be concerned about being triggered today have no one to go to in the event that it goes wrong and they are stuck in the darkness.

Thus the indecision.