The Reading Room - Labyrinth by Jane

[jgraeme2007.livejournal.com]

Labyrinth by Jane
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle
Length: 536K
Author on LJ: unknown

Warnings: unknown
ARCHIVED:  The Circuit

 

I think I’ll preface my comments by saying that I don’t necessarily think Labyrinth is a brilliant fic -- although there are certainly brilliant things about it. It’s not even one of my favorite fics, to tell the truth, but it’s a classic fic and it’s a long, meaty fic, which I think make it ideal for discussion. Also it’s by Jane, and I know many younger/newer writers and readers aren’t so much familiar with Jane’s work as with what has been written about Jane’s work. Love her or hate her, Jane was an amazing creative force.

 

So let’s talk about the fic!

 

 

( SPOILERS AHEAD )

Warnings - but hopefully not the same old debate

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

*Tick-tock. Tick-tock.*

One of the problems of being half a world or more ahead of most of your flist is that if something's scheduled for suchandsuchaday you kinda think it should be happening now, not in 8, 12 or more hours. When tired, after-work brain finally wakes up to the fact that it's only just turned into Thursday over on the West Coast, you realise you have a few hours to kill the opportunity to think/talk about something else.

My "something else" tonight is Warnings. During the last Reading Room discussion a few of us veered a little off topic & started talking about this subject. It comes up in Pros every now & then, and has done so slightly more frequently over the past few months if I'm any judge of such things. The various positions are fairly entrenched - although this time I felt I was talking to people who were at least prepared to try & understand the 'opposing' point of view. Anyway, lo and behold, there was a post linked to metafandom on the very same thing just today.

You can read metafandom's warnings posts bookmarked on delicious here. There are a ton of them - I'd recommend telesilla's post as one where the various positions are stated, frequently with some vehemence. It's clear the "warnings" debate is not done & dusted in the rest of fandom, is all I want to say about that. Read 'em if you're interested.

So, what really interested me about the newest post was This Thread which contains some civilised discussion between people I know hold very different points of view. And I simply adored this quote: " flexible warning options FTW *g*.

Because I'm not anti-warning for everybody, but I am anti having my own reading pleasure diminished by spoilers. And I understand that imperfectly rendered lj-cuts leave readers who want particular types of warning but don't want to be spoiled for other content through automatically processing at least some of the story while scrolling down the page to the trailer might have a problem! I want those 'flexible warning options', but it seems to me that we won't have them until people are a lot better trained-up in how to do them.

So my intent is to describe as clearly as possible the various options for "optional warnings".

( This way for more )

That's it! Hope some of you found it useful.

ETA: I'm getting comments re-hashing the "should there, or shouldn't there be warnings". To which I say - my post aims to get around that problem and give readers, whoever they are and whatever their preferences are, what they need! Please don't rehash the old!!!!

(also, am going to bed in a minute - because it's late Down Under)