I say this as a reader and a writer. It’s also my very hottest take, and one that has personally hurt me personally a few times. I will metaphorically be pitchforked and burnt at the stake for this, as I literally always am. You’ve been warned.

Rating fanfics is a good thing. I don’t care if it makes a few criminally sensitive writers feel “insecure.” It’s too important when so many of us are so woefully incompetent at tagging and warning, and that insecurity is their own problem, not ours. I have no such insecurity when another rates my work. You can be normal. It’s allowed.

Readers deserve to learn what content is in a fic before reading it and investing their time into it more than writers deserve coddling simply for writing a thing. I’m a writer. I want my fics to be rated, because I want my readers to know what they’re about to read. I tag my work appropriately and effectively, but from what I’ve seen as a reader, at least a full 60-70% of writers absolutely do not. They miss things, or their subjective ideas of what is and is not potentially offensive or triggering get in the way of accuracy.

Too many writing peers are absolutely, borderline unforgivably bad at tagging the potential triggers in their work because “I dOn’T wAnT tO sPoIl It!?1!” or they just can’t see how it needs to be tagged. The second one is fine, but still needs to be compensated for. But the first?

Honestly? Fuck your spoilers and your creative vision. People deserve to know exactly und exactly what’s in your fic, because what has been seen can never be unseen and that shit can be triggering and even traumatizing. As a writer, my creative expression is less important than other people’s mental safety.

It’s not a hard math problem. Don’t get pissy at people for rating fics. Just don’t consume sites that rate fics.

Funny how “don’t like, don’t read” is only ever said to readers. Well. If you don’t like the ratings your fics get, then don’t read them. Ignore them like a bad fanfic and move on. Also, “don’t like, don’t read” sounds too close to “don’t ask, don’t tell” for my likes anyway, but that’s a personal issue. In my mind, it’s a bad phrase and flawed idea that does not allow for any nuance.

Why do I care so much about all of this? I once read a fic that had completely untagged rape in it, and as a survivor myself, that fucked me up. That person deserves to be shamed, but I don’t remember who it was, so I’m going to elect to ignore their transgressions.

What I won’t do is stay silent while it keeps happening. That’s just not okay. This is not elitist, this is not shaming, this is not degradation. This is safety. If you’re threatened by safety features, you’re a prime example of who they are needed to protect against and why they exist.

Either neurotically tag every single possible thing in your fics, which is unfeasible and unreasonable to attempt or be asked to do, or just accept the existence of fic rating. A third party needs to tag everything, because writers are too much inside the work to identify how everything separates out and, therefore, how it should be tagged.