Annotated 13-12
Frigg: “Is this… one of them those UNPUNCHABLE problems? I’ve heard about that shit in myths, but I never thought…”
Kidding aside, I respect the hell out of what Phil brought to this. Since we weren’t going to have Byron break free and need to be subdued (too easy and too tangential to the main drama), it took some solid thinking to so engage all the characters’ powers and personalities in a scene that could have been written as straightforwardly and undramatically as a pinata party. Gravedust’s spoken-word poetry remains choice.
One reason I haven’t been in a hurry to do another fiction series after GA is that I get conflicting messages about how the audience responds to certain topics like suicide these days. I was doing stories that showcased suicidal impulses in Penny and Aggie, too, and sometimes got reader feedback that it was irresponsible to run those without trigger/content warnings. Those still seem to be a thing, but I’m also aware that today’s young folk are sharing memes with punchlines like “Bold of you to assume I want to live,” so I’m not sure in which direction I should modify my instincts.
If you’re restraining your creative flow due to concerns about ‘trigger warnings’, then the bad guys have already won. Seriously, if anyone, let alone someone with the public profile you have, tries to go about their lives worrying about the possible reaction of others? Nah. Can’t do it.
Let your angst flow. Give in to the…moderately Gothic side.
oh it gets much worse than that. Trigger Warnings create a false narrative that being triggered is something people can avoid Sadly real “Triggers” are by their nature irrational and involuntary thus it is impossible to know what will trigger one. This results in people still getting triggered then getting shamed for not avoiding it, or worse people avoiding life to avoid the shame.
The concept of a trigger wasn’t made to strap warnings to things so people can avoid the problem but as an explanation for everyone around the sufferer so they won’t shame them when it inevitably does happen.
Wise words Centium. Too often people think that just by naming something, they can contain/control it. Again and again people learn of things that are not easy to deal with, that will cause difficulty, and they try to avoid them, bypass them, or shield themselves from them. Keep these things outside and at arms length.
But if it were so easy these things would not already be a pervasive and difficult problem. Triggers aren’t outside, they’re already past the walls and hiding inside the house. It’s how you live with them that determines how much space they take up in your life.
I’m generally not a fan of the “well, we can’t *perfectly* avoid this problem, so whatever, let’s not do anything to mitigate it at all” approach.
Sure, you can’t prevent every trigger, but tagging your content is basic politeness that helps people who know a few things that they have trouble dealing with with be able to avoid them.
The concept of a “trigger” was made to help educate the people around a sufferer so they could act appropriately with understanding and the sufferer can let their desires not their fears dictate their actions.
“Trigger Warnings” put the weight of proper action on the sufferer, encourage avoidance based coping mechanisms that let fear not desire dictate action and promote a worldview in those around a sufferer that the sufferer should be able to avoid the unavoidable. there is also the sad irony that telling someone that something is triggering, painful, or anxiety inducing will make it so those things do inspire triggers, pain, and anxiety or increase the effect.
yes there is value in listing the themes of a work such as curation or knowing what one wants to get out of it. Trigger management is not one of those benefits.
this isn’t a case of avoiding an imperfect solution but a solution both being worse than nothing and undermining a different imperfect solution.
I beg to differ. Curation is a form of trigger management. Ergo, the worldview that trigger warnings engender is more along the lines of “a sufferer should be aided in avoiding the unavoidable if at all possible“, though I certainly see where you’re coming from.
Remember, fear is not just a useless emotion. It is one component of a suite of survival strategies that have for better or worse kept our species alive since before recorded history. That suite, under ideal circumstances* allows a person to make informed decisions.
When fears aid in preventing a mental breakdown or public humiliation, our fears can be rational. That’s why there even is such a phrase as “irrational fear”; it implies that not all of them are.
*and yes I’m aware not all circumstances are ideal 100% of the time. But it makes sense to manage the ones that can be ideal, and Trigger Warnings are a tool for doing so. There are simply sensible, and insensible, ways to use them.
Even if what you say is true, that triggers were meant to educate those around a sufferer (which I actually disagree with), “Trigger Warnings” as a content tag is still a useful tool to people who know they have triggers and choose to avoid them. In mental health recovery work, knowing your triggers and working on them is an important step. Some days we are feeling robust and can handle our triggers. Some days if we know our mental health is fragile or struggling, choosing to avoid triggers which are avoidable (such as putting off a favorite webcomic for a few days or not watching a movie that I know will cause trouble) is an important strategy for keeping equilibrium. TRUST ME everyone who is aware of their triggers knows we cannot avoid all triggers all the time. It’s just not a sustainable or healthy strategy. But avoiding SOME triggers SOME of the time, when needed, is a useful tool for daily functioning. Think of it like the mental equivalent of avoiding spicy food when my heartburn is acting up that day.
This would be reasonable if we accept the narrative of people hostile to these kinds of warnings that it’s all about “getting offended”, something they sneer at as unmanly, irresponsible and entitled. However, trigger warnings are meant to protect real emotional pain–which under no circumstance should be dismissed as less than physical pain.
Suicide trigger warnings, for example, are not meant to be a point of discussion about the political correctness of including such stuff in a story (although the people who complain about PC will try to make it a discussion). It’s about letting down easy people who have suffered a great deal of emotional pain due to the suicide of a loved one.
This said, I agree with the original poster regarding not refraining ones’ genuine narrative impulse for the sake of others’ sensibilities. Trigger warnings precisely allow content makers to stay true to their own art while avoiding to cause unduly despair to some of their readers. In my opinion, trigger warnings /per update/ are a bit too much. Rather, make clear from the beginning that your story may veer into such themes and thus prevent some readers getting engaged into something that they will have to drop at some point.
Hear hear. Excellent explanation.
I agree about not letting it hold you back from exploring such themes. One webcomic I follow, with intermittent serious/triggerworthy themes, instead of posting a trigger warning on each page will instead warn before a series of updates that there is content coming up. (For example “The upcoming scene deals with suicide and family rejection. Approx 6 pages”) Then in their rss or text along with the page just adds a minor note about the scene being ongoing. That does rely on the readership being regulars to see the note at the beginning of the scene.
I absolutely agree that you should not let the worry of upsetting people be something that halts your creative work. However, I do think that giving potential readers a head up on the possible topics which may be a part of your work. That way people have the option of opting out, knowing full well if they continue to read they could indeed read some sensitive topics.
I think SC has it right. Do the stories you want to do, but if you feel you are treading on ground that your readers might find truly upsetting to follow you on, giving them a heads up is a courtesy. You’ll still get flack from certain spaces, but your conscience will be clear.
I look at it like this. Content, in whatever media, is like food; its entire purpose is to be consumed, digested, and possibly discussed afterwards. The primary difference is that you don’t have a survival-linked energy dependency on media.
Now, obviously, just as eating food that moves is sort of its own thing, I won’t be addressing animated media, which requires a different sensibility than its illustrated contemporaries. But the static form that is the common webcomic has quite a bit in common with prepared food (it is, presumably, given a purposeful treatment), and there are therefore certain sensible guidelines to follow in creating it, even if your recipe is distinct in preparation or presentation somehow.
First, some people have safety-threatening allergies. It is important to treat them as more than “the customer’s” responsibility to manage, but “the customer” also can’t just go indiscriminately eating everything in sight if they have one of those allergies. (And some of them may not know they have them.)
Second, some people are likely to see certain content as a “taste” they haven’t acquired. In some cases, as a taste that they would rather not try to acquire. While not being dangerously allergic to it, they for whatever reason want to keep their distance, and that – while it isn’t, in the naive, loftiest, and most idealistic sense, “being open-minded and willing to learn” – is also fair. No work has truly universal appeal.
To some extent, both groups of people I mentioned above are helped when a work can be identified as belonging to a genre. “Trigger warnings” are likewise useful, to a more specific and narrow degree. They are in many ways similar to the copy text you’d find on the back of a novel, or inside the front cover, or on the jacket of a volume, but are more generic and can be thought of as “targeted”, to indicate specific points of appeal (or repulsion), to your readers.
And on that note, none of these useful tools are spoilers, per se, but they serve a similar function for a select group of people and certainly encourage conversation about a work, which is not inherently a bad thing. (Book clubs, I imagine, could rely on them to help narrow down the list of books they want to read in a season, for one thing.)
I would also like to point out that one does not merely create content for their audience, but also for the sake (and enjoyment) of creating content. If you let something obstruct you in the creative process before it even begins, then more will be lost than your impact on the world at large.
Afterthought, but I’d also like to paraphrase John Oliver. Because while I’m sure there’s plenty of people who wouldn’t turn to him regularly for wisdom, the man has had a few deep insights, and this is one of them: Whenever someone asks “where does it stop” the answer is “somewhere”.
That goes for both nonchalantly packing your work with trigger-y content, as well as the potential benefit of things like trigger warnings and being sensitive towards your audience. There are limits as to what is reasonable.
We are all only human, as the saying goes, so we make mistakes – but we’re also human. It’s not like our ability to create content is a runaway machine, with no kill switch or oversight, that Mickey Mouse went and Sorcerer’s Apprenticed out of a fucking broom. Just be mindful of others, remember you can adapt to circumstances, and you’ll have a reasonable chance at making responsible choices about what you are doing.
Thank you for your additions. I wanted to comment nearer to the time this was first posted, but was having difficulty finding words, and I think you’ve essentially said everything I wanted to (and more!), and done so more coherently than I would’ve been able to do.
And just to add a small note: Trigger warnings on content are not intended to help people avoid dealing with content that is difficult for them. Trigger warnings, when used properly, are intended to help such people know that difficult content is coming, so they can prepare themselves for it. The point is to try and not take people by surprise.
A good example is the change of practice in law schools when teaching legal issues surrounding sexual assault. In most law school classes, a teacher will call on students “cold,” without warning. But in good law schools these days, that practice is dropped for sexual assault classes, and the teacher will call on volunteers.
This allows students who have been assaulted and now find it difficult to talk about the subject in the abstract to remain quiet — but it doesn’t excuse them from attending the class, writing papers, or taking tests on that area of law.
As far as GA goes, it was pretty clear from the previous pages that something quite grim was coming. That’s all the trigger warning anyone should need.
The only thing in this comment that my mileage varied on was the “that’s all the trigger warning anyone should need” part.
Personally, I had no idea what was coming when I initially read this chapter.
Now, granted, at the time, I was in a toxic long-distance relationship with a control freak who routinely threatened suicide in order to keep me glued to my phone and isolate me from others. This affected me to the extent that I would routinely cancel my plans and even skip meals in order to (I thought) pacify them, and thereby “protect” them from themselves. All while hurting people I ostensibly cared about (including me), by isolating myself.
At the time, I could sympathize, perhaps too well, with the thought I was somehow a horrible person for wanting out of that situation by any means necessary, being too afraid to put in motion a more self-preserving end to things myself, and instead wishing someone else would save me (perhaps lethally) from my panic over the dilemma. I would also have accepted this GA scenario, and Byron’s point of view, as perfectly valid and not unhealthy or troubled.
Reading it now, I know what’s coming, and I can see Byron’s misstep in logic for what it is. I cannot, however, read it without thinking back to the damaging relationship I’d been in that made me feel so genuinely helpless, even though the scenario is not at all similar. (And I’m also aware that I’m lucky my situation didn’t have a truly traumatic effect on me and a more tragic, eventual resolution than “I ended that relationship for both our sakes”.)
However, I do understand that it’s difficult to target the kind of reader I am now, with an appropriate warning about what Byron is about to say. Which is why trigger warnings such as “discussion of suicide” are as vague or general as they are; it’s more a shotgun style of targeting than a rifle style.
You are right, and I should have been more aware about what might be specifically triggering in this scene. I’m glad your situation and state of mind are better now.
One of my favorite webcomic authors was at one point driven to a nervous breakdown by paying too much attention to the criticisms heaped upon them by entitled sociopaths.
One thing to always remember: Unless you manage to do something exceptionally horrific without warning, the vast majority of the criticism you get about “sensitive” subjects will be from a tiny, yet very vocal minority of your readers. Most people who don’t like the way a story is going will just stop reading it. It takes something of an inflated ego to face the world from a direction of “Everyone else must always do things the way *I* want them done.”
So write what you want to write. The people who like it will read it. The people who don’t like it won’t. The people who don’t like it and insist on reading it anyway and then complaining about it can be politely invited to pay you to write something different or go away.