poll! KFZ!

[aimeelicious]

So I've been giving a lot of thought to character death in fic, and the fic header warnings that often come with them, but sometimes don't. In the interest of fostering a dialogue on the topic, I've created a poll to gather some general information about reader preferences. This post/poll is UNLOCKED, in the hope that some of you will be willing to PIMP it in your journals and hopefully encourage others to fill it out, as I'd like as much input as possible. ETA: I do plan on doing a results post based on this poll, so please know that your responses will not just disappear into the ether.

Feel free to answer the poll anonymously if you wish, and take over my journal for discussion, just don't get nasty! This has been declared a kerfuffle-free zone (KFZ).

[Poll #450697]

ETA: Sorry for forgetting Smallville as a fandom...it's one of my faves and I left it off! Dang polls, can't edit them.

Comments

[beccaelizabeth]

When you read a story, what is your personal preference for character death warnings in fic headers?
I've found that a lot of stories will warn if one of the good guys die, but consider it just deserts if someone they think of as a bad guy dies. Being a fan of a particular bad guy I get really tired of reading fic that has him in and him just getting decapitated or burned alive or whatever. I'd like to be warned, so I could skip it until I'm in the mood. Because some days watching everyone die painfully is really the last straw. Which is the only reason I'd want death warnings in the first place.
But I wouldn't much mind if some random never named vamp lunch got killed without a death warning, so I think of it as 'only major characters', but have an unusual definition of major.

'required' headers depend on venue. On mailing lists you can always skip the part 0. In other places it isn't so easy to ignore the warnings if you don't want to be spoiled.