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Ratings and Warnings
Dec. 2nd, 2009 09:59 pmDoes anyone else feel frustrated by the ratings and warnings required on fanfiction?
In a practical sense, I understand their necessity. There's a ton of fanfiction out there and there has to be some way to sift and sort the the things we want to read. Plus it seems like a matter of courtesy to inform people upfront what they're getting into.
But this is a "courtesy," or at least a safeguard that we don't expect from published fiction -- which frankly, is a costlier prospect since we're usually paying hard currency for it, and by the time we find out it's "not our bag" it's probably too late to return for a refund. When we buy a book, we usually have nothing to go on besides a vague description on a book jacket and possibly a critical review or a friend's recommendation. It's not even something we get from movies. While movies are rated, they don't come with advance notice of who'll be hooking up with whom (unless that's something that's a given, like with Brokeback Mountain). Why do we require such safeguards be built into fanfiction when it's free for the taking, and if you discover that you don't like it, you can just click right off it without having some $29.95 doorstop hanging around your house?
If you're writing a romantic story that revolves around a "will they or won't they" plot, doesn't it kill your story to have to plant that rating/pairing notice right up on top of your fic? E.g...you're writing Dean/Castiel, and you label it as Dean/Castiel and then rate it NC-17. Well, that pretty much tells everyone they will doesn't it? So it not only destroys the tension of your story but it'll probably have a lot of readers skipping over most of your story to get to the part where "they will!"...and do, most likely in explicit detail if the rating is accurate. And then you never know if people liked your story or just responded to the sex. On the other hand, if you label your story Dean/Castiel and then rate it PG-13 or even R, people know there's nothing explicit in there, so that even with that forward-slash, it might not be what some people consider a "real" Dean/Castiel story.
Has anyone found any clever ways to get around this?
In a practical sense, I understand their necessity. There's a ton of fanfiction out there and there has to be some way to sift and sort the the things we want to read. Plus it seems like a matter of courtesy to inform people upfront what they're getting into.
But this is a "courtesy," or at least a safeguard that we don't expect from published fiction -- which frankly, is a costlier prospect since we're usually paying hard currency for it, and by the time we find out it's "not our bag" it's probably too late to return for a refund. When we buy a book, we usually have nothing to go on besides a vague description on a book jacket and possibly a critical review or a friend's recommendation. It's not even something we get from movies. While movies are rated, they don't come with advance notice of who'll be hooking up with whom (unless that's something that's a given, like with Brokeback Mountain). Why do we require such safeguards be built into fanfiction when it's free for the taking, and if you discover that you don't like it, you can just click right off it without having some $29.95 doorstop hanging around your house?
If you're writing a romantic story that revolves around a "will they or won't they" plot, doesn't it kill your story to have to plant that rating/pairing notice right up on top of your fic? E.g...you're writing Dean/Castiel, and you label it as Dean/Castiel and then rate it NC-17. Well, that pretty much tells everyone they will doesn't it? So it not only destroys the tension of your story but it'll probably have a lot of readers skipping over most of your story to get to the part where "they will!"...and do, most likely in explicit detail if the rating is accurate. And then you never know if people liked your story or just responded to the sex. On the other hand, if you label your story Dean/Castiel and then rate it PG-13 or even R, people know there's nothing explicit in there, so that even with that forward-slash, it might not be what some people consider a "real" Dean/Castiel story.
Has anyone found any clever ways to get around this?