About the ratings...

[fajrdrako]

Once again I am musing over a chronic problem: How to rate a story for sexual content.

I've read the rules and they don't make much sense to me - not enough to be predictive. Usually, to be on the safe side, I tend to call any story NC-17 is I put any graphic sex in it at all. And probably most of them are NC-17, by any standards. Except I'm not even sure of that. Even when I write PWPs, my stories tend to be character-and-theme oriented.

So what do I do with a story that is mostly talk, but some of it's talk about sex, and there's talk about sex acts, and at least one sex act depicted (maybe more on a rewrite), and none of it's particularly like what I see other people writing, in terms of sexual content. It's about feelings and denial of feelings, and it's a Torchwood story, which means it isn't very conventional anyway, and there's references to m/m sex and f/f sex and m/f sex. It's about both a love triangle and a threesome.

So... how do I judge? How do you judge what ratings to put on your stories? What do you expect when you see "R" or "NC-17" or "PC-13"? (I'm not even asking about the British ratings because they confuse me even further!)

Any advice would be appreciated!

Comments

[cionaudha.livejournal.com]

As a reader only, I generally expect NC-17 (or equivalent) to be full-on erotica. With bits and parts doing this and that.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

bits and parts doing this and that

Well... suppose there is masturbation and/or mutual masturbation, with parts described, but no penetration? Suppose there is lots of nakedness and cuddling without specific touching of sexual parts? Suppose there are fairly specific descriptions of orgasm and ejaculation without physical contact?

At what point does talk about sex turn into erotica?

How much sex is sex if no one is actually fucking?

[cionaudha.livejournal.com]

I've seen the designation of "hard R" to describe scenarios like that, if that helps.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hrrm. Yeah, that might help.