sophinisba | Some meta about content notes, podfic, and kink negotiation!

Here are some thoughts I've been meaning to write up about content notes, podfic, and kink negotiation since making a podfic of

thingswithwings's story "monster" earlier this summer. This post has spoilers for that fic and, in a separate paragraph that I've marked off, talks obliquely about the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Since this post is pretty rambly and personal let me start off with a summary: I think content notes sometimes work a lot like kink negotiation, which I love, and I found that to be especially powerful as I was making this podfic.

So there are lots of different ways of making podfic and lots of things one can include. Mine are usually pretty minimalist –– mainly out of laziness and shyness, I'd say. Although I tried being more ambitious for a few years, these days I almost never include music or sound effects. I love listening to other people's freetalk or reader's notes at the end of a recording, but I've only ever made them a few times. Also, at the beginning of a recording, some people will give a lot of information, including AO3 tags and summary. My intros tend to be shorter: Title, fandom, author, reader, usually pairing or main characters, rating, and sometimes content notes.

As far as I can tell I've always done content notes for things I think could be upsetting, especially consent issues. The second podfic I ever posted was noncon and I couldn't remember so I just went back to check and yes, I did say so in the intro, though at the time I called it a "warning". I switched to saying "contains" or just explaining what the thing was a few years back, most likely because

thingswithwings made a post that I can't find now about why "content notes" was a better and less judgy term and I mostly agreed.

(In general I've been influenced a lot by her thoughts about how we talk about kinks and potential triggers and fanworks and well everything over the years, in posts such as this one from 2010 about shifts in how people write content notes and this one from 2015 about "I don't like X but" comments. I also have two older podfic meta posts on my mind here,

general_jinjur's from 2010 about podfic and bodies and intimacy" and my own from 2011 about podfic and kink_bingo –– especially the section labeled "Podfic is kinda kinky".)

So then it was interesting to be starting off recording this fic of hers that I love and where 1) the content is super intense and 2) the consent issues are honestly pretty hard to explain without spoiling the story. With written text there are ways of hiding a spoilery note so people can choose whether to read it, but with a podfic people can't just skip over your intro. And I probably felt a little extra nervous with this one, knowing that it was likely

thingswithwings herself would end up listening to the podfic and yes, she's always been really supportive of my podfics but also she has all these strong and smart opinions about content notes!

I wrote out a draft of the intro (I always do, I am not an improviser!) and recorded it, and then recorded and edited the whole podfic, and then realized the intro I'd recorded was more spoilery than I wanted it to be (and more so than the author's original intro content note), so then I rewrote it and rerecorded, and this is what I ended up with:

This fic is rated explicit, and listen, it's really intense. It narrates a scene of simulated interrogation, rape, and torture. The thing is, the torture is real, but it's consuensual, but it happens in a context that makes consent complicated.

If that sounds iffy to you, you might want to hit pause and take another look at tags. Thingswithwings has also provided a useful spoilery explanation as an endnote to the fic posting.

Wanna keep going? 'Cause I sure do, I fucking love this story. Here it is.

The trickiest part was that first paragraph, like I said, trying to figure out how to balance useful information that would help people decide if it was a good idea to listen but also not spoiling. But this post is more about the other two paragraphs, because I was also thinking about how to put that information out there without saying it was bad, which could make a listener feel bad. I've occasionally seen/heard content notes along the lines of "Please do not read/listen if X is a trigger for you", and I know that comes from a place of love but I can perceive the tone as disapproving and the phrasing as imperious. Like, I don't have triggers, but I get to decide whether to listen or not, and someone who has triggers also gets to decide. That is why I liked the idea of just offering the option of pausing to get more information and decide.

And then the last line of the intro is me saying, "Hey, just in case you thought I might be judging you for liking those things I just mentioned, I'm totally not! I'm the one who decided to make the podfic! I'm right there with you!" To be honest that last line is also about me trying to seduce the listener into coming with me on this adventure!

And what I realized, the more I thought about that intro, is that what I do there really parallels what Bruce is doing within the fic, and what other characters do in many of my other favorite kink fics, which is to propose something that might be intense and painful and then give their partner the option of continuing or not (but hoping they will continue!).

Like, apart from the kidnapping/interrogation and everything the fic is really about Bruce the sadist offering to hurt Tony, indicating what he's planning to do, and repeatedly reminding him he can say no, and about Tony amazing Bruce by repeatedly telling him to keep going, to keep hurting him. (It's so great, ahhhhh.) And I think this parallel is especially powerful with this particular story because it has this unusual sadist POV, where the narrator says Bruce has tried in the past to pretend what he and Tony did together was about Tony wanting to get hurt. And like, Tony does want to get hurt, but also Bruce wants to hurt him. It made me think about how ... I guess I wouldn't say I want to hurt my listeners but I want them to have an intense experience thinking about pain, and I'd guess

thingswithwings wants the same for her readers.

I was also thinking about all of this in terms of trust and care. Another thing that happens in this fic is that the bad guys have injured Tony as they were kidnapping him, and this makes Bruce really angry, even as he's preparing to cause Tony way more pain the bad guys have: "Bruce wants very badly to hulk out just thinking about the fact that someone else, some random ex-soldier, could mark Tony so carelessly and so unthinkingly. Could make him feel pain without meaning it or wanting it." In contrast, everything Bruce does to Tony is purposeful, and (more or less!) consensual and careful, in a way that Bruce knows won't cause permanent damage. And Tony isn't going to consent to being hit and burned and cut by random strangers but he wants it from Bruce because he trusts him and cares for him (and because they're gonna outsmart the bad guys but that's also related to the trust and the history they have together ahhhhh). The first line of the fic is Bruce saying "It has to be me."

I kind of want to say it had to be

thingswithwings for me to read a fic with those tags and summary, though it's possible I'd be exaggerating a little. I'm nervous to write this next part because I don't want to get into "I don't like X but" commentary, but whatever okay I'm gonna write this now. So like, a few weeks before I came across this fic, I signed up for

justmarriedexchange and, as I usually do in exchanges, put torture/interrogation on my do-not-want list. This is because I get upset when I see torture presented as an effective and justifiable means of getting important information, something that happens more often on TV and in movies but also occasionally in fanfic. And that's not really what happens in "monster", but enough elements are there that I felt nervous and a little uncomfortable even as I was reading (the first time), and also I've never been especially into knifeplay and there were some other parts of it I wasn't sure I wanted to read. So if I if I saw those tags on a fic by a stranger I might well not have clicked through (despite the desperate desire for Tony whump that has consumed much of my summer). The next time I sign up for an exchange, knowing I could be assigned to anybody and that it'll be super awkward if I don't like what they make, I'll probably use the same DNWs. But already knowing and trusting

thingswithwings as an author and as a person meant I only hesitated a little before starting to read this. And the thoughtful content notes she had written were in a way like her offering a hand at the beginning of the fic, saying, hey, I know this is scary but I'm gonna get you through it and take care of you, and I think you might enjoy it.

And so it was! And although I'm not as famous myself and there aren't nearly as many people who listen to podfic as read fic in general, I also know that there are people who are fans of my way of reading and who trust me to choose good fics to podfic. So I feel like I'm also offering a hand and inviting them to try something scary (though for other listeners it's not scary at all). And even for people who don't have previous experience with us as creators, the content notes are a way of signaling to readers/listeners that we're not going to hurt them carelessly or unthinkingly. I would be more nervous about being hurt by a fic that didn't have any content notes. Or, for that matter, by a random episode of Torchwood or Merlin or say a movie like Avengers: Endgame.

ETA Aug. 9 Another way of thinking about this that I didn't quite manage to articulate when I wrote the post yesterday is that as a fanfic reader I am very accustomed to identifying with the sub and/or masochist character in a kinky fic, and also with the hurt character in hurt/comfort, with whoever is giving up control and having things done to them, and being taken care of. That POV is more common but also like, even if I'm reading something with a dom or caretaker's POV I'm more likely to think "Oh that's so good of them, I want to be taken care of like that" rather than "I want to do that".

So I want to say that this experience is shifting something for me. It's not that I haven't enjoyed like, orchestrating hurt or discomfort or other intense feelings for my readers or listeners before, that's been important for me since the first fic I wrote, more than 14 years ago now (!). But I had not thought of that as a kind of caring sadism before, had not thought of myself in that way, and I'm enjoying that new perspective. /ETA

So it was making this podfic that's so much about kink and communication that made this clear to me, but since then I've also been paying attention to the trust that goes into the relationship between fanwork creator and consumer in general, and the intimacy of podfic in particular, the way it can bring up feelings that are hard to get away from but also one can feel very well cared for when one is being read to.

A paragraph that talks about death and about Avengers: Endgame
Earlier today I posted a podfic of If the Bough Breaks (Someone Will Catch You), a gen fic by

Meatball42 set at the end of Endgame, and I used the "Grief/Mourning" and "Canonical Character Death" on the AO3 posting, but in the recording itself I just said "This story takes place at the end of Avengers: Endgame," and the characters' names, but if you know that movie you know that this is likely to be a lot. Idk, to me that intro felt like enough of a warning. You can tell me I'm bullshitting but I seriously feel like the way my voice goes soft on the word "Endgame" is me saying "Hey, friend, I bet you downloaded this podfic because you're sad about that thing that happened in Endgame. I am also sad and so are the characters in this fic, and maybe also you or I are sad about what happened to a friend or a parent or a mentor. Let's spend 12 minutes being sad together."

And to me this is also a gesture of love, and is also a way of offering to hurt someone, but in a way that I think they might like, and this makes me very tender and happy.

Some meta about content notes, podfic, and kink negotiation!

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