Before you read a Prosfic...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Somewhere along the way I've picked up the impression that Pros fans tend to be divided most strongly into either slash, gen or het (or various combinations thereof) readers, and that it is on this basis first that we decide whether or not to read a particular Prosfic story. Following an interesting discussion a few weeks ago about labels/categories/warnings etc on Prosfic, Circuit Archive is experimenting with including other information in their lj (and presumably other) updates, and this has got me thinking about it all again - in a rather needs-first-coffee-of-the-morning kind of way!

Basically, I know that I hate all warnings etc on a Prosfic story that I'm about to read, except that I'd like to know whether it's slash, gen or het, because I adore slash, I'll read gen if there's some reason to (or a chance of adding my own subtext!) and I don't want to touch het with a bargepole... a very long bargepole! During the discussion, I came across the idea that most people would view a label of slash, het or gen (or the story's pairings, which actually is a much smarter way of telling us whether it's slash, het or gen!) as the same kind of "spoiler" as, say a deathfic warning, which completely surprised me, took me aback, and got me thinking even more... *g*

And then I remembered that lj lets you do those poll-thingies, and wondered if I might try one of those... though I'd like to hear what people think as well as just seeing numbers, so please do comment as well! So - what kind of, if any, information do you look for before you read a Pros story? (And I'm not really going for the to-warn-about-deathfic/rape/non-consensual debate here, although I've included it in my question and I'm curious about numbers there too, it's more the broader sense of the question - and do we care about age ratings? Are there other things people consider that I've never even thought of?!) So, without further ado:

[Poll #1043269]
I've never tried doing a poll before, so here's hoping it works - do let me know if you have problems... Oh, it looks like you have to vote first, and hit submit, and then comment afterwards - you can't comment and vote at the same time (I just tried it...)! And non-lj members can't vote (says lj, not us), but you can still comment!

Comments

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like that about Pros as well, though I don't have any other fandoms to compare it to! So does S/H tend to warn for everything then?

I'll go by author as much as anything else too - except that I still don't want to read het! I can stand most of Rebel's gen so far (*g*) but I'm missing her Pros slash, cos it feels like ages since she's slashed Pros! Is she saving it all up for S/H then?! Come back RebelProsslash, I miss you! *g*

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

So does S/H tend to warn for everything then? More than Pros. As for Rebel and her slash, she's been doing a 30(?)Smutty Lemons challenge in S/H, which is just brilliant - full of variety on the smut theme.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought she was... these multi-fandom writers, I don't know... maybe a warning about them - "Will abandon your fandom for others upon occasion, beware long gaps"... *g*