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

[mommimus-prime.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of NC-17 as having graphic descriptions of the act plus detail descriptions of the parts used. Doesn't matter if there's a great story. Oh, non-con wouldn't make an NC-17 unless it included the above. I like verbal warnings rather than just ratings so I can decide without have to sample. That's just me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I also tend to think verbal descriptions are more useful than ratings. (On the whole, I gravitate to NC-17 and run screaming away from MPREG.) But as a writer? I'm just confused.

"Graphic descriptions of the act and the parts used" is helpful, except that in the current story it has me wondering "how graphic is 'graphic'"? What is the relationship between 'mention' and 'description'? Pfft.

The more I think about it, the more confused I get.

[mommimus-prime.livejournal.com]

It's sort of a *I know what I like and I know when I see it" type of thing. It's all very personal. I'll read just about anything except non-con and incest and yeah, mpreg, but someone else would be horribly offended by even the most minor thing. I even like giant robot sex of the non-sticky variety so it's hard to judge just by ratings. And there are all layers of explicitness. Generally, I don't think of robot sex (plug and play and such) as graphic and wonder why it has to have NC-17 ratings.

I honestly don't think you can come up with a satisfactory rating to please everybody and you should just rate your stuff the way you think it should be rated. It's impossible to warn everybody of every little thing.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's true - you can't please anyone however you do it and most readers don't care much about the rating anyway - they'll either want to read about sex or not, and that's the main point of the ratings.

My main kink is for 'good writing' so I'll read practically any genre or type of story regardless of content if I have faith in the author to write well. Which is a subjective judgment at best. I've read and loved all sorts of outrageous stuff I thought I wouldn't, just because of the quality of the writing and the thought behind it.

And no one anywhere puts: "WARNING! BAD WRITING!" on their stories, but there are people who put 'warning - unbeta'd crackfic' on their stories so I know to skip those. And if the writing/spelling/grammar is bad enough, it's clear from the first sentence.

I think I might just settle on an R for my story.

[mommimus-prime.livejournal.com]

Yes, nothing worse than badly written porn. Aargh! The cliches, they burn. LOL

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

nothing worse than badly written porn

Ain't it the truth! (Shudder)

[cionaudha.livejournal.com]

What. You don't love a solid hour of hard thrusting followed by a shouting-match of duelling orgasms with gallons of scalding come?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Not sure about the 'scalding' part; sounds painful. But if I'm picturing Jack and Ianto doing the thrusting and shouting.... Hmm. How bad could it be?

(I pause to consider some of the stories I've read... Yeah. Pretty bad.)

[cionaudha.livejournal.com]

This is all from a story I read that featured "scalding come". Gallons of it. Just like in real life! And a full hour of hard thrusting. Ow.

I like to picture Jack and Ianto doing just about anything. I live in hope that someday we'll get to see something.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

This is all from a story I read

I was afraid of that. The things people will say... Scalding. Huh. Got his body temperature set a little high, there.

Yes, I hope we get more than we've had so far. Really.