Series titles
Aug. 29th, 2008 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseWell, for fanfic, that is.
I tend to archive my series/universes, especially my unplanned ones, with the title of the first fic in series. This is not normally a problem. But when I was working on cataloguing some fic last night, I ran across the problem of a fic series where the title was much fluffier than quite a bit of the content.
I've discussed the problem of "Furry Children" and other stories in its series before. "Furry Children" itself contains a sentence or two that would be rather disturbing if it weren't in the POV of someone that doesn't consider what he's thinking about doing is at all wrong. Same for the otherwise fluffy "Baby's First Word". People can read both of these fics with no clue about the fact that they're distinctly not fluffy in spots.
But the second fic in the series, "Monster in her Child", has a nongraphic rape scene which is made squickier by the fact that the perpetrator appears to be in his early teens (he's 127; in my universe he is pretty much the equivalent, mentally and physically, of a human in his early teens). And the victim, who gets pregnant from it, is still dealing years later.
Now, I think of this set of fics by the first story's title because to me, all of the stories contain the same (potentially disturbing) story thread and I know what looks like fluff isn't so fluffy. But I worry about someone stumbling across the first fic, ignoring/missing the warning on the second fic, and flaming me for not warning about the squick in question. Or reporting for issues that don't exist, for the fics that are on LJ.
I'm torn between retitling the series and forgetting which series I'm referring to and just leaving it as it is and trusting that people read the warnings. It also unsettles me to try to retitle the series because some of it *is* rather fluffy. Just parts of it are not.
For the moment, I'm leaving the title as is because I can keep better track of it. But I wonder someday if it it might be better to change it....
I tend to archive my series/universes, especially my unplanned ones, with the title of the first fic in series. This is not normally a problem. But when I was working on cataloguing some fic last night, I ran across the problem of a fic series where the title was much fluffier than quite a bit of the content.
I've discussed the problem of "Furry Children" and other stories in its series before. "Furry Children" itself contains a sentence or two that would be rather disturbing if it weren't in the POV of someone that doesn't consider what he's thinking about doing is at all wrong. Same for the otherwise fluffy "Baby's First Word". People can read both of these fics with no clue about the fact that they're distinctly not fluffy in spots.
But the second fic in the series, "Monster in her Child", has a nongraphic rape scene which is made squickier by the fact that the perpetrator appears to be in his early teens (he's 127; in my universe he is pretty much the equivalent, mentally and physically, of a human in his early teens). And the victim, who gets pregnant from it, is still dealing years later.
Now, I think of this set of fics by the first story's title because to me, all of the stories contain the same (potentially disturbing) story thread and I know what looks like fluff isn't so fluffy. But I worry about someone stumbling across the first fic, ignoring/missing the warning on the second fic, and flaming me for not warning about the squick in question. Or reporting for issues that don't exist, for the fics that are on LJ.
I'm torn between retitling the series and forgetting which series I'm referring to and just leaving it as it is and trusting that people read the warnings. It also unsettles me to try to retitle the series because some of it *is* rather fluffy. Just parts of it are not.
For the moment, I'm leaving the title as is because I can keep better track of it. But I wonder someday if it it might be better to change it....
