Ratings and Warnings
Dec. 2nd, 2009 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleDoes 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?
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-03 04:00 am (UTC)Perzackly. This is what I mean about the nannying. We say that warnings are to keep readers from being -- I dunno, traumatized by a given story's content.
No one's ever been able to adequately address the question: What if trauma is the motherfucking POINT? Are we supposed to sugar-coat everything? On the off chance that someone might be shocked, or offended, or -- choose your reaction? Are we supposed to be reassured that all topics are either sanitized for our protection -- thereby requiring no warnings at all -- or kept on a shelf labeled and warded and spackled and shielded, lest we somehow RISK exposure to an idea that bothers us?
Fuck that. I used to try my best to play that game. I got REEAAAALLY tired of it. I don't like the idea that I can't think for myself. That I have to be protected. I don't like death stories, most of the time, myself -- but I'd rather stumble into a death story than know, going in, that Dean's/Sam's/the entire world's gonna bite it. I understand when people say they don't want real-world grittiness -- they want fantasy. I understand, and I say this: Start reading the mother, and if you see it going a direction you don't like, JUST FUCKING STOP READING. Don't require the author to stand over your shoulder, like a hand-wringing mommy. If you're old enough to read this shit, you're old enough to deal with the consequences.
Lack of exposure -- well, it depends. If the price of exposure is shellacking your work in needless, spoilery warnings, and risking a mitigated impact as a result, I don't know that the exposure's really worth it. It will never be quite the same sort of response as it might have been, had people not been spoiled. But I did play the game a long time, and in so doing I got a bunch of my work out there in people's faces. These days I don't jump through the hoops, but I don't write much at the moment, either, so there's that to keep in mind. (As to how much of the falling-off in my volume is my own doing, and how much is a tired reaction to the increasingly odious burden of warning, formatting, etc., etc., on the authors' shoulders, I can't really say. Probably a bit of both. As you say, we do this for free. When it turns into a chore, it...becomes a chore.)
no subject
Date: 2009-12-04 01:20 am (UTC)I can recall that I was once very upset by an LoTR fic -- that was very highly regarded and practically attained legendary status in that fandom -- because it was such a complete overturning of canon hobbit lore. I feel much more strongly about Tolkien's canon than I do about Kripke's. That was a long time ago but I'm pretty sure that fic had all the usual warnings...what was upsetting about it was the way it was written and by the author's general perspective and essential disdain for canon. Now, in that case it might have helped if she'd labeled it as an AU, but even so, nothing could have prepared me for what she had in store. I personally find that the things that can be upsetting in a work of fanfiction are things that you can't put a label or warning on.