This is where I really appreciate the first amendment in the US, and it’s one the supreme court holds pretty dear to its heart. It may not be perfectly upheld, corporations try to sway it, but, AFAICT, the strongest protection to free speech on the planet. And, the whole concept of ruling a law as unconstitutional *isn’t* explicitly stated in the constitution either, that has a history too (Mauberry vs Madison is the case that established the court’s authority to rule as such). I just hope the current prez’s attempt to demonize free press doesn’t bear fruit.
That said, a little tinkering for the purposes of tackling “anchor babies” in the US (ie, the birthright citizenship), or to allow prayer in school (religious right), to the fourteenth amendment (that’s what carries the first amendment protections down to the other levels of government AND grants birthright citizenship), and a nasty war or two with some Muslim countries and/or Russia and/or China (all very real possibilities), and we could have the universe that *my* stories are portraying, where a resurgence in the religious right means that the government now has a duty to see that promote every person’s spiritual well being, and we get…
Yep, and it starts off with an eight year old boy “Jeff” who goes from taking a bath to finding himself in a nudist camp, which lets me explore a group who doesn’t appreciate the government trying to promote their spiritual well being and the implications of that. My universe here is hard-sci-fi, which means any tech has to be plausible/buildable with today’s general understanding of the world; and with the general setup, there’s an implied suppression of the creative talent who’d be advancing the state ofthe art as “promoting the devil”.
True, future doesn’t have to be “sci-fi”, though it generally is. I’ve been listing some of mine under Originals/Misc because its sufficiently non-tech enough that sci-fi may or may not be appropriate, despite being in the future and having some elements of tech. Heck, a recent episode I wrote involved Amish, and while they had a tablet computer at their market for scanning/adding prices, that was the only real tech they had. I do make the tablet a ubiquitous item in my worlds, because I figure that’s the form factor that today’s laptops will go to for the general user; iPads for normal work (editing documents, watching shows), and smart phones; but even that line is blurring today. Wireless keyboards might still be a thing for a power user.
With how I’ve setup my universe, as the religious right resurges in the US, and across the globe, with the US government’s “Department of Homeland Morality”, people who disagree with this, people who wish to value their freedom to think independently, tend not to have to worry about it for too long as they get weeded out. Thus, to show the interesting stories are with the young adults, the teenagers, so that’s where I tend to pick up those minor1/minor2 tags.
When in doubt, keep it in. Now, you do have flexibility to where you put the warnings tags, your options are 1) summary, 2) top of the story, and/or 3) top of the relevant chapter. I tend to avoid #3, because that’s too much of a spoiler, I prefer “somewhere in the story” vs “in this chapter”, unless it’s a series of oneshots at which point, top of the chapter is better. So more recently, I’ve been putting major/significant tags to the summary, and ALL tags at the top of the story; this warns the reader without cluttering up the summary. So, if the story is ten chapters describing a lick by lick on a blowjob, then [oral] would be advertised in the summary, but if its a half line of “sucked his cock”, one of a handful throughout a M/M or M/F story, and none really significant to the plot other than “built a little bit onto the relationship”, it’d be at the top of the story. Now, [rape] is more of a general trigger tag, like Minor1 or Minor2, and I tend to suggest keeping those in the summary. Lots of shades here.