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➡️ Content warnings on fiction are a courtesy.
➡️ Not every medium of fiction and storytelling has or is expected to have content warnings or extensive tagging.
➡️ Print novels do not traditionally warn for content in any way.
➡️ Until AO3 came along, fanfiction did not traditionally warn for content in any significant way.
➡️ An author is only obligated to warn for content to the degree mandated by the format they publish their fiction on.
➡️ Content warnings beyond the minimum are a courtesy, not an obligation.
➡️ ‘Creator chose not to warn’ is a valid tag that authors are allowed to use on AO3. It means there could be anything in there and you have accepted the risk. ‘May contain peanuts!’
➡️ Writers are allowed to use ‘Creator chose not to warn’ for any reason, including to maintain surprise and avoid spoilers.
➡️ ‘Creator chose not to warn’ is not the same thing as ‘no archive warnings apply’.
➡️ It is your responsibility to protect yourself and close a book, or hit the back button if you find something in fiction that you’re reading that upsets you.
➡️ You are responsible for protecting yourself from fiction that causes you discomfort.
I feel like this phenomenon is really interesting actually- that we expect excessive warning and ridicule creators who chose not to give it.
It definitely started with fanfiction tags, but fanfiction culture and etiquette can’t be applied to traditional media. It is TikTok reading culture that, when presented with the question of how to describe a book succinctly, resorted to tropes and reductive descriptors in order to get the point across in some universal, easy to understand, way that also fit to the short format of a TikTok. TikTok content warnings existed long before what we see as BookTok today. Creators were ridiculed for not using them in triggering videos and so they became common practice and very much expected to the point that ‘TW: Knife’ is something one sees often when scrolling down an average FYP. This bled over into an already streamlined, trope-infested BookTok, which impacted authors and their practices seeing that a large percentage of their audience was coming from TikTok.
Modern book culture turned into modern film and show culture and now we expect excessive warning on every piece of media. But in the transition from fanfiction to BookTok something was lost: namely the fact that fanfiction authors were never required and almost never ridiculed for not using content and trigger warnings; it was, as you said, a courtesy. Often nice to have but far from expected. The, dare I say, savage culture of BookTok and TikTok as a whole was what pushed traditional authors to start using content warnings, which bled over back into fanfiction.
It’s honestly really sad to see a whole ass book or show sometimes labeled as ‘immoral’ and ‘insensitive’ because the creator chose not to warn an audience of its contents. It is, again as you said, always the consumer’s responsibility to close the book or turn off the laptop. You know your triggers, and a creator who doesn’t know you and never will is not obligated to soften the impact their art for you. Especially if a trigger warning will spoil a twist or plot thread. ‘CW: Main character death’ is something reserved *for fanfiction*, please dear god random person on TikTok don’t spoil the fucking book for me.
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