This looks like a good occasion to ask: how reliable is fimfiction.net rating system?
I have cautiously read a couple of top-rated stories on fimfiction.net and found them really good. But I know there are nastier ones out there, and those I would like to avoid.
Am I safe just by not clicking the prominent “View Mature” checkbox? But should’t the story automatically fit into “Mature” if it’s labeled Dark or Tragedy?
I know of the Internet Rule 43: “The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt”. But I have no desire to meet with manifestations of this rule.
To my mind, honestly Teen rated fic for a show rated “TV-Y” (ages 2 and older) is enough of a stretch. For characters of such show to suddenly take keen interest in intimate relationships, violence or whatnot (without a hint at it in the show) just doesn’t look appropriate. I’m worried by the (greater than 0) amount of sex in some of the stories labeled Teen, too.
It’s curated. Every story is checked by a mod before being posted. Personally, I don’t like this: I would rather authors had freedom to post anything they wanted, and run the “risk” of offending people or exposing people to things they didn’t want to see every now and then. Hell, in my book, that’s a feature, not a bug.
But should’t the story automatically fit into “Mature” if it’s labeled Dark or Tragedy?
AAUGH! No!
“Mature” is supposed to mean explicit sex or violence. This is funny when you think about it. Amit (a clever fellow) wrote a postmodernist meta-textual story and said it was “mature”, to make the point that “mature” should mean something like “a story intended for mature people” rather than “a story intended for fifteen-year-old boys”. On the other end of the scale, my own story “Twilight Sparkle and the Quest for Anatomical Accuracy”, easily the most immature story I’ve ever written, was re-rated by a mod as “Mature”.
“Dark” is any story that suggests that the world is not inherently friendly to you. “Black Robe” is dark, not because it has sex and violence, but because the priest tries so hard to do the moral thing and causes destruction to those who listen. There is a Russian short story called “How does it feel to be free?” that is very dark, that is just about a man released from years of being unjustly imprisoned, who finds he wants nothing but to go back to prison because he can’t handle freedom anymore. “The Trial” by Kafka is dark. My “Game of Immortals” is dark comedy. If we admit any story that claims the universe is dispassionate, then all of Eliezer’s writings are dark. Someday, when humanity is wiser and stories do not by default assume that the universe is friendly, the category “dark” may shrink to mean only those stories claiming the universe is malevolent, such as the writings of Lovecraft.
“Tragedy” is a story in which some character… aw, heck, just google it. It doesn’t require sex or violence except when ancient Greeks do it.
To my mind, honestly Teen rated fic for a show rated “TV-Y” (ages 2 and older) is enough of a stretch. For characters of such show to suddenly take keen interest in intimate relationships, violence or whatnot (without a hint at it in the show) just doesn’t look appropriate. I’m worried by the (greater than 0) amount of sex in some of the stories labeled Teen, too.
Fandom is largely about the extrapolation of characters in the show into more complete worlds.
Fandom is largely about the extrapolation of characters in the show into more complete worlds.
I think we can agree on that. It’s just that extrapolating into some of the worlds troubles me.
As far as I can understand, curation and rating systems should exist to give reader the freedom to read what they want to read (and avoid what they want to avoid), not take away any freedom. I would prefer they include everything, just label it appropriately; and that’s what curation should be good for: to make sure everything is labelled consistently whether or not every individual author does so.
Now that I think about it, I notice (yet again) that I hardly know a thing about state of censorship and ratings (is it how they call this “rated M for mature content”). I wonder, what is the general consensus on all of that and how it evolved over time? I already thought of maybe finding a book on it, or something, but it looked like stupid way to spend time so I didn’t. Individual articles like [url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code]Hays Code[/url] don’t give the full picture.
This looks like a good occasion to ask: how reliable is fimfiction.net rating system?
I have cautiously read a couple of top-rated stories on fimfiction.net and found them really good. But I know there are nastier ones out there, and those I would like to avoid.
Am I safe just by not clicking the prominent “View Mature” checkbox? But should’t the story automatically fit into “Mature” if it’s labeled Dark or Tragedy?
At FimFiction, when an author labels a story ‘mature’, they have the option of selecting from one of two sub-categories: sex and gore. A story can be Dark or Tragic without those elements, and it’s at least plausible that even a story with gore might not be Tragic, and might even be a comedy, ala Shaun of the Dead. So, avoiding the Mature checkbox will certainly help you avoid such stories—but there are some edge cases which might slip through.
Another list of high-rated stories is Equestria Daily’s Star 6 ones. I don’t recall any that made it to that ranking that include content that’s erotic, though some are somewhat dark, such as “Background Pony”’s horror aspects.
Equestria Daily is a reliable source of pretty-good pony stories. But they don’t like risk. For an idea of what kind of stories you’re likely to find there, go look at the pony art on deviantart, and then look at the tiny subclass of it, stylistically, that ever appears on Equestria Daily. They posted Fallout: Equestria, and some other risky stories. But they have their own idea of what ponydom should be, and the pre-readers speak in their correspondence as if they had the authority to speak for EqD and for other pre-readers, so I presume they talk with each other behind the scenes about what ponyfiction should be.
At least one of the pre-readers on EqD is also a mod on fim-fiction, and you can see from the groups and blogs that pre-readers talk largely to other pre-readers. The ponyfic world is still cliquish.
This looks like a good occasion to ask: how reliable is fimfiction.net rating system?
I have cautiously read a couple of top-rated stories on fimfiction.net and found them really good. But I know there are nastier ones out there, and those I would like to avoid.
Am I safe just by not clicking the prominent “View Mature” checkbox? But should’t the story automatically fit into “Mature” if it’s labeled Dark or Tragedy?
I know of the Internet Rule 43: “The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt”. But I have no desire to meet with manifestations of this rule.
To my mind, honestly Teen rated fic for a show rated “TV-Y” (ages 2 and older) is enough of a stretch. For characters of such show to suddenly take keen interest in intimate relationships, violence or whatnot (without a hint at it in the show) just doesn’t look appropriate. I’m worried by the (greater than 0) amount of sex in some of the stories labeled Teen, too.
It’s curated. Every story is checked by a mod before being posted. Personally, I don’t like this: I would rather authors had freedom to post anything they wanted, and run the “risk” of offending people or exposing people to things they didn’t want to see every now and then. Hell, in my book, that’s a feature, not a bug.
AAUGH! No!
“Mature” is supposed to mean explicit sex or violence. This is funny when you think about it. Amit (a clever fellow) wrote a postmodernist meta-textual story and said it was “mature”, to make the point that “mature” should mean something like “a story intended for mature people” rather than “a story intended for fifteen-year-old boys”. On the other end of the scale, my own story “Twilight Sparkle and the Quest for Anatomical Accuracy”, easily the most immature story I’ve ever written, was re-rated by a mod as “Mature”.
“Dark” is any story that suggests that the world is not inherently friendly to you. “Black Robe” is dark, not because it has sex and violence, but because the priest tries so hard to do the moral thing and causes destruction to those who listen. There is a Russian short story called “How does it feel to be free?” that is very dark, that is just about a man released from years of being unjustly imprisoned, who finds he wants nothing but to go back to prison because he can’t handle freedom anymore. “The Trial” by Kafka is dark. My “Game of Immortals” is dark comedy. If we admit any story that claims the universe is dispassionate, then all of Eliezer’s writings are dark. Someday, when humanity is wiser and stories do not by default assume that the universe is friendly, the category “dark” may shrink to mean only those stories claiming the universe is malevolent, such as the writings of Lovecraft.
“Tragedy” is a story in which some character… aw, heck, just google it. It doesn’t require sex or violence except when ancient Greeks do it.
Fandom is largely about the extrapolation of characters in the show into more complete worlds.
I think we can agree on that. It’s just that extrapolating into some of the worlds troubles me.
As far as I can understand, curation and rating systems should exist to give reader the freedom to read what they want to read (and avoid what they want to avoid), not take away any freedom. I would prefer they include everything, just label it appropriately; and that’s what curation should be good for: to make sure everything is labelled consistently whether or not every individual author does so.
Now that I think about it, I notice (yet again) that I hardly know a thing about state of censorship and ratings (is it how they call this “rated M for mature content”). I wonder, what is the general consensus on all of that and how it evolved over time? I already thought of maybe finding a book on it, or something, but it looked like stupid way to spend time so I didn’t. Individual articles like [url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code]Hays Code[/url] don’t give the full picture.
At FimFiction, when an author labels a story ‘mature’, they have the option of selecting from one of two sub-categories: sex and gore. A story can be Dark or Tragic without those elements, and it’s at least plausible that even a story with gore might not be Tragic, and might even be a comedy, ala Shaun of the Dead. So, avoiding the Mature checkbox will certainly help you avoid such stories—but there are some edge cases which might slip through.
Another list of high-rated stories is Equestria Daily’s Star 6 ones. I don’t recall any that made it to that ranking that include content that’s erotic, though some are somewhat dark, such as “Background Pony”’s horror aspects.
Equestria Daily is a reliable source of pretty-good pony stories. But they don’t like risk. For an idea of what kind of stories you’re likely to find there, go look at the pony art on deviantart, and then look at the tiny subclass of it, stylistically, that ever appears on Equestria Daily. They posted Fallout: Equestria, and some other risky stories. But they have their own idea of what ponydom should be, and the pre-readers speak in their correspondence as if they had the authority to speak for EqD and for other pre-readers, so I presume they talk with each other behind the scenes about what ponyfiction should be.
At least one of the pre-readers on EqD is also a mod on fim-fiction, and you can see from the groups and blogs that pre-readers talk largely to other pre-readers. The ponyfic world is still cliquish.
Some stories with sex content or humor on EqD:
The Night Fluttershy Exploded
Hey, Where’s the Cream Filling
Snails’ Big Problem
Luna VS Threesome