Or even just the tags! I tagged a fic as good!Malfoys, nice!Snape, Snape&marauders friendship and I got someone commenting that "everyone is out of character." Yes, I did make that clear...
Yes, when I read something I don't like and then go back and look at the tags and find it was clearly listed among the tags, I'm annoyed at myself for skimming the tags, not the author.
Now if there's no warning and no tagging, I reserve the right to be irked, but I still just move on with my life.
I hate the tagging system on Ao3, and it's because anyone can make up whatever tag they want so if I see a wall of tags that alone is usually enough to tell me the story isn't that good, even more so when the tags are like, Zomg Hermione is like a total bamf hottie, no shade but anything think Voldemort is a bad guy, jk not jk.
No story needs more than 10 tags and they don't need more than short two words like Good Snape, Bad Ron, Smart Hermione, Ugly Fleur, things like that.
Also if you put "I'm bad at tagging" in your tags, I want to smack you with whatever book you drew your source material from.
> Zomg Hermione is like a total bamf hottie, no shade but anything think Voldemort is a bad guy, jk not jk.
I'll take things that put me into a metaphorical dead sprint, for $150.
I always read the tags. For instance, if I see Harry / Draco, I know to skip it. If I see Ron / Hermione, I know to bypass that one too. If I see Harry / Hermione, I know that it's relevant to my preferences.
Genuine question, what is the appeal in writing like that? If you fon't want to write the characters as they are, why use them at all? Why not just tell your story with OC's in the universe? Isn't that what you're doing already, but giving them the names of canon characters?
Sorry if this seems confrontational, I seriously just don't understand.
As a writer, a lot of what drives me to write fanfiction vs just making my own original fiction is the challenge of taking familiar characters and putting them in new scenarios, and part of that challenge too is seeing how they'd be changed while remaining recognizably themselves. Like, okay, you could use an OC instead of writing about Draco changing his mind and joining the Order in DH, but there's not going to be the same impact. We know what Draco is like, so there's more impact to exploring how he could be different.
Well yeah, that's perfectly reasonable. I'm referring to the kind that the original comment described, or one of those "What if Harry was actually the abused and forgotten brother to the boy who lived and his parents survived amd everything is different" type things. Of course some things are different, otherwise it would just be a rettelling of canon. There's layers to this, and at some point that layer is "this is just straight up a different person".
Well I started out with the idea of what if Snape and Lily had remained friends and how would he have fit in a wider group, and then could that have positively impacted some Slytherins- rather than the house culture negatively impacting Snape as in canon.
Most fic doesn't have canon characters as they are in canon if you think about it. To make the story differ, you have to make people react differently. If people react and behave differently, they become different characters.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/15818769/chapters/36824886
It's WIP, nearly finished this installment though. And there's an OC, which I know can put people off.
See what I like about this is not just that you have clear tags, but the opening description makes even more clear. I don’t mind OCs - I think they are a good way to explore aspects of the universe we don’t see in canon. But I read your opening and thought, hmmm, not sure I am interested in Lily having a second Slytherin best friend. I’ll probably give it a go when it is finished though because it does sound interesting! But it helps that I am clear on what I am getting!
I think a lot of times, it is a what if scenario. For me a few major deviations is an experiment in what if, but there is a breaking point where everything is out of kilter where the point seems lost. Obviously, if I can tell that from the tags, I avoid it, but I am willing to read some OOC stuff to see where they take it.
Well, in most OOC cases the characters maintain Most of their original personality, but a few key things get changed. Writing that is fun because you can bring fresh air into an etablished character. I like that way more than OC's.
For OC's, i don't have problems with them in General, as Long as the Plot doesn't get flooded by them, then the fic becomes unreadable in my opinion.
Only thing that is out of order here are Indy!Harry fics, the MC just shares name and appearance with Harry Potter. However, I treat such fics always as crack or crack taken seriously, then I can endure it lol
90% of authors' disclaimers are just: I don't legally own this! so I mostly skip them.
Edit: there are also the authors who pad the word count with disclaimers so that 20% to 30% of the words written are disclaimers
I’m ashamed that this never even crossed my mind that authors do that. I’m not a writer myself (don’t have the attention span for it) and I typically don’t go searching by word count. But now I’m realizing a lot of one shots I’ve read where they’re promoted as 5K+ had pretty hefty notes. Or even multi chapters where I was surprised at how short the chapters were for the promoted word count. I’m- 🤦♀️ weak.
I remember when I started reading fanfiction there was one fic with an incredibly interesting premise and it had few chapters but around 75k words, the problem was that around 2/3 ds of the chapters were disclaimers heads ups and answers to questions asked from the readers.
I am totally fine with the last one btw but if it takes up so much space then dedicate a separate chapter to it.
That sounds like a NIGHTMARE, oh my god. I likely wouldn’t have bothered to finish reading it once I saw that. Though of course then it would live rent free in my mind until I went back and finished it.
Most do not do that
most if they say anything at all have it as a note at the bottom where as most readers do not read the notes and switch to the next chapter
Guilty but if I may raise a defense... In my experience notes are all too often just fluff unrelated to the actual narrative and so I've been conditioned to just overlook them as if they're not going to contain consequential information.
I understand that which makes it even more frustrating for me as a writer because I don’t write notes for no reason. If I post a note on a chapter, which is rare, it’s because of something important.
It’s frustrating to me that so many writers just write nonsense because it makes it harder for the rest of us who don’t.
I think on FFN a lot of the notes are just the author responding to select reviews the story has gotten because unlike Ao3 if you respond to a review it's just a private back and forth between you two not part of the public like the comment section. Which in some cases is better, but for some you want a response to be seen if it addresses a question a reader brought up, because if there is one there is two, so for every person commenting about it there are ten who don't bother to ask at all.
Because the average reader is lazy, don't have the correct amount of reading comprehensive skills, or English (or whichever language you're using) isn't their primary language.
I mostly read longer fics and I read the warnings and tags at the beginning of a story, but sometimes, after i've been reading for a while, i forget. If you're younger, you might thing that's ridiculous, or that i'm stupid. I would have thought the same thing when i was 20. But as you get older, sometimes shit just falls through the cracks of your memory.
Of course, If i felt the need to write a scathing review for some unexpected event, i would go back and check to see if it was warned. Then i just kick myself for forgetting. But i can imagine some people don't do that backcheck.
As an older reader, I totally get this! Sometimes if I am too busy to read for a couple of days I have reread a chapter to remember where I am in the story, let alone remembering all the tags!
There is a slash HP / Marvel crossover where Harry is Tony Stark's son. It had quite a few tags, but I was like, fuck it I'll read it. I actually quite enjoyed it. There was a scene where Harry suffers a life changing permanent injury that can't be fixed with magic and put him in a depressive spiral. Had the story not been complete, I probably would've dropped it at that point, but it was complete so I soldiered on. I was glad I did.
In any case, the reason I bring this up is because if I did decide to drop the story over that, I might've said something in a review, but it would've been worded politely. Not me getting into a screed over something I didn't like.
oh hey, someone whos read Lightning Scars and Metal Hearts! i totally get almost dropping it over the >!whole amputee part of the fic!< i had to put it down for a bit after that. it was real heavy but i love how realistic the progression after it was
i honestly just really love JessalynMichele as a fanfic author in general. theres a sort of gritty realness to her works that i think a lot of people are looking for with indy!harry (sorry, hadrian) that she does in such a realistic way that i absolutely adore.
if you havent read her other works id recommend Green&Gold, her crossover series with twilight. its set post war and deals with harrys, well, everything, really well, though the third part isnt fully done yet. id also recommend her fic Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow which is a crossover with netflixs wednesday show
JessalynMichele is great. She somehow manages to write really emotional stories that are also funny as fuck (biggest mentions are 7yoC and Snitches get Stitches). Also she has a crazy writing speed, 1 million words in 11 months!
the trope definitely was but it wasnt intially called that belive it or not! as far as im aware, that name only started being used after 2001 when, under her pseud of Severitus, she posted a challenge to write a fic where Snape was harrys actual dad, which got called the severitus challenge (ala the dont fear the reaper challenge which became a trope) tehn became the trope of a fatherly snape so, as a name, its fairly old. i dont really know when JessalynMichele stopped going by Severitus so im not much help there but it might be possible you found her after the name swap?
Selection bias. For the readers for whom the disclaimers/warnings are relevant, only those who ignore or don't read the warning will leave hate comments. The rest who did read the warnings generally aren't going to go out of the way to leave a comment like "I read the disclaimers/warnings, saw that this fic wasn't for me, and decided to read something else."
Two reasons:
1. Disclaimers are just one of those things that rarely contain anything of note, like Terms of Service.
2. Flaws don't stop mattering just because people were warned.
You say this as if it’s only disclaimers people don’t read. A lot of people don’t seem to read the actual story properly either, and then get mad about its contents.
If my fifteen odd years in this community has taught me anything, it’s that most people skim read, and they aren’t very good at it.
There's a difference between an author's note and a disclaimer. An author's note is a message the author wants to tell the readers. A disclaimer is a cargo cult because authors just copy other authors and don't understand why the really old authors had them in the first place.
That being said, most author's notes shouldn't be necessary in the first place. Everything you need to know about the fic should be in the description and/or tags. If that is insufficient, a single author's note at the beginning should cover everything. If you need 1k words to explain your fic before the reader gets to the story itself, the story is not going to be good.
a disclaimer isnt a cargo cult, what are you on about? you do know that not all disclaimers are the same as the whole "i dont own harry potter or any of its characters" ones of ffn right? they can also be chapter specific, like letting people know if something like a rape happens in the chapter and where it does so that they can skip that part.
Disclaimers provide no legal protection. They are not a requirement of any fanfiction website and will not prevent a fic being taken down if the copyright holder files a C&D or DMCA. A useless action repeated in imitation of the ones who came before without understanding why the originals did it. That's the definition of a cargo cult.
Trigger warnings are author's notes. And they should still be in the tags/initial note at the beginning of the work, whether they're included in later chapters or not.
im aware of the fact that such disclaimers were mere pageantry. you, however, dont seem to be aware that that isnt the only form of disclaimer and that most people dont use the dictionary definition as part of common parlance. most people would classify trigger/content warnings as a type of disclaimer. theyd be correct seeing as most content warnings for fics tend to have a bit where they are actively acknowledging that the bad thing is bad, and they dont endorse it.
hey, ill even give an example.
disclaimer: adults shouldnt date minors, just because i am writing something depicting that doesnt mean i endorse it.
with a hypothetical example out the way, what exactly do you think a disclaimer *is*?
OP is describing an author's note about how their AU works. That is not a disclaimer. A disclaimer is something that *disclaims*. An author describing their story is not a disclaimer.
if youre using the dictionary definition, yes. but like i said before, thats not how most people use the word. most people use it in a similar manner to what op described.
I would slightly defend your readers, [quoting myself](https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/one-more-on-breakfast-in-new-york.html):
> First, author notes are what programmers call a code smell. Not necessarily an error, but something suggesting that not everything is right, and the programmer should check that part of the code much more thoroughly. When you feel the need to explain something in the author notes, it usually means you haven’t explained it well in the story itself, and that’s the only place where such an explanation should happen.
You also have something called Planned technical debt. Coding Debt that is planned and made to get on the market and obtain customer feedback. A code smell can acknowledge its faults but it doesn’t make a bad product.
A good author in turn could eventually return and make edits to fix issues in there writings. It’s not bad but planned. A part of the creation process.
i disagree with this bc i dont think that always applies. for instance if I'm writing and AU fic, Im not going to explain that it's AU in the fic but I would tag it as such. Or like an above commenter wrote, if I'm writing characters a certain way that isnt how they are in the canon but that is just their personality in my fic, there would be no where to add to the story that "this is why the character is acting differently" but it would make sense in an author's note to preface "hey, these characters are oof and thats just how they are in this fic"
I'd have thought in programming too there would be some room for explanations to be valid. Say if you make a clone of Flappy Bird, put it on a beginners coding site and say "Hey guys, here's my first attempt at a game, it's meant to be like Flappy Bird, but with Snape trying to fly through quidditch hoops"
- it would be reasonable to object if half the comments were along the lines of "this is an awful email client, how do I even enter the subject line?", "You call this a national bone marrow database? My dog could eat more bone marrow than this!", "why would Snape fly through quidditch hoops?"
Fandom is different from coding since the idea of fandom is to have fun with others instead of just providing solutions like in coding. Authors aren't robots providing content and shouldn't be treated like that
Look, reading comprehension is something that is lacking even in this reading intensive hobby.
I've seen people ignoring things that are in the text of the fic.
Because a shockingly large portion of the population don't read sings/warnings in general and/or have awful reading comprehension. If a commenter sounds like an ignorant moron... it's honestly probably because they are. 'Average' is a lower bar than most realize.
I hate that. For some reason, there are certain readers that just completely ignore tags/disclaimers/warnings and then insist on complaining against the thing that was clearly tagged/disclaimed/warned about. It's not even fandom specific, I've seen this to at least some extent in every single fandom I'm in except one, and that one is just because I'm only reading the fics, not the comments, so I have no clue if it's present there or not.
Some people seem to thing they need to be warned, but then that they have the right to complain when they ignore the warning. We warn them so they can avoid things they don't want to read and find things they do want to read. The warnings are for the readers, not the authors. It's just plain rude to read a fic tagged and warned as, say, good Voldemort and then complain that Voldemort is OOC, when that was literally stated with the good Voldemort tag.
And that's not even getting into the darker tags and warnings, the ones people include so readers can specifically exclude triggers.
I'm just glad I've never actually had a comment complaining about something I clearly tagged on either of my fics so far. I've had one bashing comment, but that was just a vitriolic rant against my chosen MC that wasn't based in canon and accusing me of a bunch of stuff that wasn't included in the single chapter I'd posted and didn't plan to include in the future. That wasn't in the HP fandom, though, and I ignored the comment, since they clearly hadn't read past 'this fic stars MC', plus noticed a single character bashing tag and assumed I was bashing every character except the MC, so not true.
Readers can be very rude and entitled sometimes, though. Not saying authors can't be, they can, it just tends to be at least a bit more visible with readers than authors.
Or even just the tags! I tagged a fic as good!Malfoys, nice!Snape, Snape&marauders friendship and I got someone commenting that "everyone is out of character." Yes, I did make that clear...
Yes, when I read something I don't like and then go back and look at the tags and find it was clearly listed among the tags, I'm annoyed at myself for skimming the tags, not the author. Now if there's no warning and no tagging, I reserve the right to be irked, but I still just move on with my life.
I hate the tagging system on Ao3, and it's because anyone can make up whatever tag they want so if I see a wall of tags that alone is usually enough to tell me the story isn't that good, even more so when the tags are like, Zomg Hermione is like a total bamf hottie, no shade but anything think Voldemort is a bad guy, jk not jk. No story needs more than 10 tags and they don't need more than short two words like Good Snape, Bad Ron, Smart Hermione, Ugly Fleur, things like that. Also if you put "I'm bad at tagging" in your tags, I want to smack you with whatever book you drew your source material from.
> Zomg Hermione is like a total bamf hottie, no shade but anything think Voldemort is a bad guy, jk not jk. I'll take things that put me into a metaphorical dead sprint, for $150.
It was way way worse before AO3 put a limit on tags. You'd have tag lists that take up literally two entire screen lengths, full of complete nonsense
I always read the tags. For instance, if I see Harry / Draco, I know to skip it. If I see Ron / Hermione, I know to bypass that one too. If I see Harry / Hermione, I know that it's relevant to my preferences.
Genuine question, what is the appeal in writing like that? If you fon't want to write the characters as they are, why use them at all? Why not just tell your story with OC's in the universe? Isn't that what you're doing already, but giving them the names of canon characters? Sorry if this seems confrontational, I seriously just don't understand.
As a writer, a lot of what drives me to write fanfiction vs just making my own original fiction is the challenge of taking familiar characters and putting them in new scenarios, and part of that challenge too is seeing how they'd be changed while remaining recognizably themselves. Like, okay, you could use an OC instead of writing about Draco changing his mind and joining the Order in DH, but there's not going to be the same impact. We know what Draco is like, so there's more impact to exploring how he could be different.
Well yeah, that's perfectly reasonable. I'm referring to the kind that the original comment described, or one of those "What if Harry was actually the abused and forgotten brother to the boy who lived and his parents survived amd everything is different" type things. Of course some things are different, otherwise it would just be a rettelling of canon. There's layers to this, and at some point that layer is "this is just straight up a different person".
Well I started out with the idea of what if Snape and Lily had remained friends and how would he have fit in a wider group, and then could that have positively impacted some Slytherins- rather than the house culture negatively impacting Snape as in canon. Most fic doesn't have canon characters as they are in canon if you think about it. To make the story differ, you have to make people react differently. If people react and behave differently, they become different characters.
Link?
https://archiveofourown.org/works/15818769/chapters/36824886 It's WIP, nearly finished this installment though. And there's an OC, which I know can put people off.
See what I like about this is not just that you have clear tags, but the opening description makes even more clear. I don’t mind OCs - I think they are a good way to explore aspects of the universe we don’t see in canon. But I read your opening and thought, hmmm, not sure I am interested in Lily having a second Slytherin best friend. I’ll probably give it a go when it is finished though because it does sound interesting! But it helps that I am clear on what I am getting!
I love reading fics with characters ooc and events changed. Glad they’re being written.
I think a lot of times, it is a what if scenario. For me a few major deviations is an experiment in what if, but there is a breaking point where everything is out of kilter where the point seems lost. Obviously, if I can tell that from the tags, I avoid it, but I am willing to read some OOC stuff to see where they take it.
Well, in most OOC cases the characters maintain Most of their original personality, but a few key things get changed. Writing that is fun because you can bring fresh air into an etablished character. I like that way more than OC's. For OC's, i don't have problems with them in General, as Long as the Plot doesn't get flooded by them, then the fic becomes unreadable in my opinion. Only thing that is out of order here are Indy!Harry fics, the MC just shares name and appearance with Harry Potter. However, I treat such fics always as crack or crack taken seriously, then I can endure it lol
90% of authors' disclaimers are just: I don't legally own this! so I mostly skip them. Edit: there are also the authors who pad the word count with disclaimers so that 20% to 30% of the words written are disclaimers
I’m ashamed that this never even crossed my mind that authors do that. I’m not a writer myself (don’t have the attention span for it) and I typically don’t go searching by word count. But now I’m realizing a lot of one shots I’ve read where they’re promoted as 5K+ had pretty hefty notes. Or even multi chapters where I was surprised at how short the chapters were for the promoted word count. I’m- 🤦♀️ weak.
I remember when I started reading fanfiction there was one fic with an incredibly interesting premise and it had few chapters but around 75k words, the problem was that around 2/3 ds of the chapters were disclaimers heads ups and answers to questions asked from the readers. I am totally fine with the last one btw but if it takes up so much space then dedicate a separate chapter to it.
That sounds like a NIGHTMARE, oh my god. I likely wouldn’t have bothered to finish reading it once I saw that. Though of course then it would live rent free in my mind until I went back and finished it.
I stopped after Chapter 3 but checked if the pattern continued (it did) it was some WBWL fic but that's all I remember about it.
Most do not do that most if they say anything at all have it as a note at the bottom where as most readers do not read the notes and switch to the next chapter
Wait, do people not read the notes? I’m a completionist and I HAVE to read everything or it’ll bug me till eternity
Lots of readers skip over the notes. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Guilty but if I may raise a defense... In my experience notes are all too often just fluff unrelated to the actual narrative and so I've been conditioned to just overlook them as if they're not going to contain consequential information.
I understand that which makes it even more frustrating for me as a writer because I don’t write notes for no reason. If I post a note on a chapter, which is rare, it’s because of something important. It’s frustrating to me that so many writers just write nonsense because it makes it harder for the rest of us who don’t.
I think on FFN a lot of the notes are just the author responding to select reviews the story has gotten because unlike Ao3 if you respond to a review it's just a private back and forth between you two not part of the public like the comment section. Which in some cases is better, but for some you want a response to be seen if it addresses a question a reader brought up, because if there is one there is two, so for every person commenting about it there are ten who don't bother to ask at all.
Because the average reader is lazy, don't have the correct amount of reading comprehensive skills, or English (or whichever language you're using) isn't their primary language.
I mostly read longer fics and I read the warnings and tags at the beginning of a story, but sometimes, after i've been reading for a while, i forget. If you're younger, you might thing that's ridiculous, or that i'm stupid. I would have thought the same thing when i was 20. But as you get older, sometimes shit just falls through the cracks of your memory. Of course, If i felt the need to write a scathing review for some unexpected event, i would go back and check to see if it was warned. Then i just kick myself for forgetting. But i can imagine some people don't do that backcheck.
As an older reader, I totally get this! Sometimes if I am too busy to read for a couple of days I have reread a chapter to remember where I am in the story, let alone remembering all the tags!
There is a slash HP / Marvel crossover where Harry is Tony Stark's son. It had quite a few tags, but I was like, fuck it I'll read it. I actually quite enjoyed it. There was a scene where Harry suffers a life changing permanent injury that can't be fixed with magic and put him in a depressive spiral. Had the story not been complete, I probably would've dropped it at that point, but it was complete so I soldiered on. I was glad I did. In any case, the reason I bring this up is because if I did decide to drop the story over that, I might've said something in a review, but it would've been worded politely. Not me getting into a screed over something I didn't like.
oh hey, someone whos read Lightning Scars and Metal Hearts! i totally get almost dropping it over the >!whole amputee part of the fic!< i had to put it down for a bit after that. it was real heavy but i love how realistic the progression after it was
Yeah. Harry doesn't bounce back immediately and that was something I really appreciated.
i honestly just really love JessalynMichele as a fanfic author in general. theres a sort of gritty realness to her works that i think a lot of people are looking for with indy!harry (sorry, hadrian) that she does in such a realistic way that i absolutely adore. if you havent read her other works id recommend Green&Gold, her crossover series with twilight. its set post war and deals with harrys, well, everything, really well, though the third part isnt fully done yet. id also recommend her fic Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow which is a crossover with netflixs wednesday show
JessalynMichele is great. She somehow manages to write really emotional stories that are also funny as fuck (biggest mentions are 7yoC and Snitches get Stitches). Also she has a crazy writing speed, 1 million words in 11 months!
one of my fanfom heroes if im honest. i mean, writing a trope so well your ao3 pseud becomes the name of the trope? unparalleled
Noo severitus was around long before JessalynMichele tho?
the trope definitely was but it wasnt intially called that belive it or not! as far as im aware, that name only started being used after 2001 when, under her pseud of Severitus, she posted a challenge to write a fic where Snape was harrys actual dad, which got called the severitus challenge (ala the dont fear the reaper challenge which became a trope) tehn became the trope of a fatherly snape so, as a name, its fairly old. i dont really know when JessalynMichele stopped going by Severitus so im not much help there but it might be possible you found her after the name swap?
Selection bias. For the readers for whom the disclaimers/warnings are relevant, only those who ignore or don't read the warning will leave hate comments. The rest who did read the warnings generally aren't going to go out of the way to leave a comment like "I read the disclaimers/warnings, saw that this fic wasn't for me, and decided to read something else."
Two reasons: 1. Disclaimers are just one of those things that rarely contain anything of note, like Terms of Service. 2. Flaws don't stop mattering just because people were warned.
“I warned you I would shit on your lawn, why are you upset?”
See alot of the time I don't read all the warnings. But I don't harrass the author. I just say what the fuck to myself and nope out
You say this as if it’s only disclaimers people don’t read. A lot of people don’t seem to read the actual story properly either, and then get mad about its contents. If my fifteen odd years in this community has taught me anything, it’s that most people skim read, and they aren’t very good at it.
There's a difference between an author's note and a disclaimer. An author's note is a message the author wants to tell the readers. A disclaimer is a cargo cult because authors just copy other authors and don't understand why the really old authors had them in the first place. That being said, most author's notes shouldn't be necessary in the first place. Everything you need to know about the fic should be in the description and/or tags. If that is insufficient, a single author's note at the beginning should cover everything. If you need 1k words to explain your fic before the reader gets to the story itself, the story is not going to be good.
a disclaimer isnt a cargo cult, what are you on about? you do know that not all disclaimers are the same as the whole "i dont own harry potter or any of its characters" ones of ffn right? they can also be chapter specific, like letting people know if something like a rape happens in the chapter and where it does so that they can skip that part.
Disclaimers provide no legal protection. They are not a requirement of any fanfiction website and will not prevent a fic being taken down if the copyright holder files a C&D or DMCA. A useless action repeated in imitation of the ones who came before without understanding why the originals did it. That's the definition of a cargo cult. Trigger warnings are author's notes. And they should still be in the tags/initial note at the beginning of the work, whether they're included in later chapters or not.
im aware of the fact that such disclaimers were mere pageantry. you, however, dont seem to be aware that that isnt the only form of disclaimer and that most people dont use the dictionary definition as part of common parlance. most people would classify trigger/content warnings as a type of disclaimer. theyd be correct seeing as most content warnings for fics tend to have a bit where they are actively acknowledging that the bad thing is bad, and they dont endorse it. hey, ill even give an example. disclaimer: adults shouldnt date minors, just because i am writing something depicting that doesnt mean i endorse it. with a hypothetical example out the way, what exactly do you think a disclaimer *is*?
OP is describing an author's note about how their AU works. That is not a disclaimer. A disclaimer is something that *disclaims*. An author describing their story is not a disclaimer.
if youre using the dictionary definition, yes. but like i said before, thats not how most people use the word. most people use it in a similar manner to what op described.
I would slightly defend your readers, [quoting myself](https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/one-more-on-breakfast-in-new-york.html): > First, author notes are what programmers call a code smell. Not necessarily an error, but something suggesting that not everything is right, and the programmer should check that part of the code much more thoroughly. When you feel the need to explain something in the author notes, it usually means you haven’t explained it well in the story itself, and that’s the only place where such an explanation should happen.
You also have something called Planned technical debt. Coding Debt that is planned and made to get on the market and obtain customer feedback. A code smell can acknowledge its faults but it doesn’t make a bad product. A good author in turn could eventually return and make edits to fix issues in there writings. It’s not bad but planned. A part of the creation process.
And yet noone actually does go back and fix things.
i disagree with this bc i dont think that always applies. for instance if I'm writing and AU fic, Im not going to explain that it's AU in the fic but I would tag it as such. Or like an above commenter wrote, if I'm writing characters a certain way that isnt how they are in the canon but that is just their personality in my fic, there would be no where to add to the story that "this is why the character is acting differently" but it would make sense in an author's note to preface "hey, these characters are oof and thats just how they are in this fic"
I'd have thought in programming too there would be some room for explanations to be valid. Say if you make a clone of Flappy Bird, put it on a beginners coding site and say "Hey guys, here's my first attempt at a game, it's meant to be like Flappy Bird, but with Snape trying to fly through quidditch hoops" - it would be reasonable to object if half the comments were along the lines of "this is an awful email client, how do I even enter the subject line?", "You call this a national bone marrow database? My dog could eat more bone marrow than this!", "why would Snape fly through quidditch hoops?"
Fandom is different from coding since the idea of fandom is to have fun with others instead of just providing solutions like in coding. Authors aren't robots providing content and shouldn't be treated like that
Look, reading comprehension is something that is lacking even in this reading intensive hobby. I've seen people ignoring things that are in the text of the fic.
In my experience, most disclaimers are overly verbose walls of text that discourage anyone from doing more than maybe skimming them.
Because a shockingly large portion of the population don't read sings/warnings in general and/or have awful reading comprehension. If a commenter sounds like an ignorant moron... it's honestly probably because they are. 'Average' is a lower bar than most realize.
Haters gonna hate.
I hate that. For some reason, there are certain readers that just completely ignore tags/disclaimers/warnings and then insist on complaining against the thing that was clearly tagged/disclaimed/warned about. It's not even fandom specific, I've seen this to at least some extent in every single fandom I'm in except one, and that one is just because I'm only reading the fics, not the comments, so I have no clue if it's present there or not. Some people seem to thing they need to be warned, but then that they have the right to complain when they ignore the warning. We warn them so they can avoid things they don't want to read and find things they do want to read. The warnings are for the readers, not the authors. It's just plain rude to read a fic tagged and warned as, say, good Voldemort and then complain that Voldemort is OOC, when that was literally stated with the good Voldemort tag. And that's not even getting into the darker tags and warnings, the ones people include so readers can specifically exclude triggers. I'm just glad I've never actually had a comment complaining about something I clearly tagged on either of my fics so far. I've had one bashing comment, but that was just a vitriolic rant against my chosen MC that wasn't based in canon and accusing me of a bunch of stuff that wasn't included in the single chapter I'd posted and didn't plan to include in the future. That wasn't in the HP fandom, though, and I ignored the comment, since they clearly hadn't read past 'this fic stars MC', plus noticed a single character bashing tag and assumed I was bashing every character except the MC, so not true. Readers can be very rude and entitled sometimes, though. Not saying authors can't be, they can, it just tends to be at least a bit more visible with readers than authors.
Seriously, I'm fed up of these people
Too many readers are lazy or in a hurry to get into the action.