If you walk into a haunted house, they are going to try to scare you.

If you get on a roller coaster, you are going to experience g-forces.

If you watch an R-Rated movie, you are going to experience foul language, violence, and/or sexual situations.

If you use a website that caters to all writers of fan-fiction, you are going to encounter every possible thing that comes under that umbrella.

Before you do something that might make you uncomfortable, stop and think.  

You have the right and the responsibility to curate your own experiences in these spaces.

I’m an AO3 user (reader & writer), and for a long time all I did was hit the appropriate warnings they had already set up (i.e. Major Character Death), as I had been a long-time user of Fanfiction.net, and was more accustomed to their layout/rules/methods. Then, I started noticing that AO3 authors didn’t just have notes saying, “The following is a work of fanfiction and I do not own the characters Luke Skywalker, Spock, James Bond, etc.”, but had these, “This Fic Contains”, and, “Trigger Warnings/Possible Triggers”. 

After reading that, I went to DoesTheDogDie.com and saw where they had expanded what had formerly just been letting you know if the animals in movies/shows died, to having all these ‘trigger warnings’ like if people are shown being violently ill on screen, does the torture scene include damage to the eyes, is someone sexually assaulted on screen, does a child die on screen, etc. After reading many of those, I realized how many things you might want to be aware of and I started trying to be more mindful when I published fanfictions, to say that at the top, “Trigger Warning- mentions of drowning, nightmares related to traumatic events”, and the like to let people know what they are in for. Most of the time, it isn’t something that will ‘spoil’ the story, it is just something to stop people from reading my story if my story is going to upset them.

I don’t write to hurt people, I don’t write to make someone have nightmares. Think of it as something like a Drug Facts/Warning label, and people read it and then either decline the medication or sign the consent form to get the medication. You write up this little thing saying, “The Following Fic Contains x, y, and z”, the reader scans that and goes, “Okay, I can deal with all that- lets get to reading!”, or they go, “Yeah, I can’t deal with Y cause it reminds me of bad things, so I’ll go check something else out. Maybe this author has something else I’d like that doesn’t have Y in it.”

But AO3 allows creators to create and consumers to consume- and all freely, at your own discretion. If a reader wants to read about tentacles doing unspeakable things to stranded explorers, there’s likely a fic (or 1,000) for them on AO3. If a reader wants to read some tooth-rottingly sweet fairy-tale rewrite of Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov’s lovestory, there’s a fic (or a few) for them on AO3. If you’ve got this fanfic you wrote that is Justice League- but with Zombies, there’s a tag waiting for you, so you can post that to AO3. If you want to publish this little fanfiction you wrote 4 years ago, for a dead fandom that probably had 100 members to begin with, there’s a slot for that on AO3.

This is one place where as a reader and as a writer, you have the freedom to choose what you want and not have to worry about 50-11 people butting in on you to tell you how to change what you want in order to use their service. On A03, you can pretty much read what you like (Cause someone will have posted it, surely) and you can write what you please.

Doesthedogdie.com is a good resource on getting the hang of what you might want to use content warnings for!