hi hi!

hm, yeah, so as you know dddne is more of a concept than it is a label for certain types of content. I get that it's a tag on AO3, but I'm going to be honest I'm not entirely sure I understand why. Personally I think it's just something everyone should be doing if they're worried about what kinds of content they're consuming (checking tags thoroughly and being aware that what the tags say are what they're going to get). Not that I think using that tag is a bad thing, just that I don't think it's required or necessary as long as you're tagging major triggers.

However, it does get used interchangeably with terms like "dark" and "taboo" and yeah, it's extremely difficult to draw a line as to where something goes from "freaky" to "dark/taboo" and would even more so require the sort of care that dddne suggests.

I think if we had to define it, I would personally suggest that anything that contains a common trigger would cross that line. Like when it comes to consent for example, dubious consent (dubcon) covers a pretty broad range of situations and in general does not tend to depict super violent scenes. So, I wouldn't consider it taboo, necessarily. It can certainly be triggering to some people due to their own personal experiences, but anything can be at that point. On the other hand, rape/non-consent (noncon) is a very common trigger, especially for people with trauma of the same nature. So at that point, I believe it would be considered dark/taboo/dddne.

Some others I feel like probably go in that same category would be heavy violence/gore, death/grief & loss, incest, and underage in some contexts (like obviously a fluffy, sfw teen romance story is not taboo lmfao). So when people say it's up to judgment, I feel like this is probably the best way to judge. If you look at a story/trope and can reasonably discern a major trigger that could be involved, then that's where I believe something would cross the line into dddne territory.

I also think it's important to remember, again, that anything could be triggering to someone, so when we talk about things that are dark/taboo it can be good to take into consideration just how widely impactful that thing is. The AO3 archive warnings are a pretty good place to start with that, as well. I really think that's the only way to draw any sort of objective line, since things are so muddied when it comes to everyone's own personal traumas, beliefs, experiences, triggers, etc.