contemplations on a thursday

[kaigou]

Yet again, comments on another journal post made me ponder, mixed with Mat re-asking the Q I'd had a month ago. And I've learned that posting fresh is always better than writing back a dry response that could be taken any of several ways. Instead, I'll belabor the point so it can be taken all those ways. Etc. Writers, I'd really like your two cents on this one, but it's all behind the cut.

If you want Disney in your fiction, I'm not the author for you.

The mention of "write something less explicit" came up in an earlier thread where I teased AsukaK that I wouldn't write a sex scene in Sunrise, which is effectively a get-together story (both of two siblings and of two lovers, and NOT the same pairings you pervs stop that get away from my babies). Excuse me. I'll try again.

In the MPAA ratings, there are several things that seem to draw the line between PG-13 and R. The first is drug usage. Drug usage can be implied in moderation (ie "they're off to get stoned"), but any depiction of drug usage is R, IIRC. Sexual situations can be implied; think of what soap operas can manage on a daily basis now. You don't have to show a great deal to imply a truckload. Language is an odd one. You can use a single instance of the word 'fuck' in a non-sexual context; two instances and you're R-rated. One instance in a sexual context ("wanna fuck?") and you're R-rated. Violence seems to be a sliding scale; I've seen some pretty damn gory PG-13 films.

It's such a fluid thing. I remember being told Kate Chopin's Awakening was a scandal when it was published for its sexual situations. I think I'd read it twice before I figured out that when the female protagonists sits down on the sofa with the male protagonist...something happened in there. It's all between the lines, and so subtly implied it just misses us completely now. (The entire class was baffled, actually, which made me feel less like a moron for not getting the Victorian hangups.) That said, I can see the value to a limited extent of rating movies, but only in the sense that it's a limiting, limited, and flawed system. One person's majorly intense emotional drama is for 'adults' -- I would never let a child watch The Changeling, for instance; another might look at much of the violence in LotR, for instance, and think it's fine for a ten-year old.

I don't like rating books or stories. I can see the value in it, in fanfiction, because it gives new readers a handle on what to expect. Most fanfiction authors don't have the skills to write teasers and summaries (and most archives don't or won't code for various reasons, mostly time & room on the visual page). Lacking a cover, a blurb, a summary, a teaser, the rating (and pairing info, genre, context, spoilers, etc) are all helpful. But they're not the entire story. In a manner of speaking.

There are two things I've noted when I participate in discussions with friends about 'rating' a story. The first is this odd assumption that all stories (read: movies) containing a gay relationship are automatically NC-17. That's bullshit, plain and simple. The other note is that ratings will be inflated (or reduced with judicious editing or just underestimating), depending on the audience preferred. I know in fanfiction, 90% of the readers out there will skip a G-rated story; it's associated with 'for small children' and who wants to read that when the original series had mecha/alchemy, violence, and war? I've also read stories rated NC-17 and I get to the end and think, you'd be lucky if that were PG. Messing with the rating is an old trick to get attention from one quarter or another, which is one reason I distrust self-labeled works. Ya gotta wonder about the author/creator's slant.

I think the top reason, though, for not rating a story is because that rating now carries a set of expectations: this must be what I get. An adult would look at 'PG' and say, man, that's nothing. Yeah, and Watership Down was PG; you wanna tell me that didn't have major emotional punch? Henry and June -- wasn't that one of the first to be rated NC-17? I watched that, and it's not that there's a great deal of sex depicted in the movie that's really so outlandish. Nekkid boobies, mostly, a few flashes of anything else. Blink & you miss it. What's explicit in it is its frank treatment and discussion of sex, sexuality, and attraction. Oh, and don't forget Henry Miller's wife being a heroin addict, or whatever kind of junkie she was. Today, I wouldn't give that movie more than an R.

The thing with a story is that if it's done right, I don't care about a rating. As a matter of fact, I've fallen in love with some pretty disreputable characters and when I do, I want them as they are, right off the page; I'll grin and bear it through their warts. It's a writer's finest art, to make me like a character I'd want to shoot in person: the bigot, the self-pitying single, the philanderer, the homophobe. Be explicit, because I'm in love. I don't want the whitewashed version when I'm in love. I want stories where the author digs in and reveals all the quirks and unlikeable and likeable parts of a person. How is the writer to know which part will make a reader keep going, or throw the book across the room? For one person, the squick may be the sex; for another, it's the violence, but for me? Ethics. Characters who make the wrong choice for the wrong reason and know it's wrong--but it's helping the plot along!--actually bug me more than anything else. I want those stories rated S. For 'stupid'. As in, "this story may contain moronic character development." Short of shortchanging the story & characters with a rating of S, I don't think you can know as an author, so you write the best story you can, put in as much as you can, and let the readers sort it out.

I think of the PG-13 movies I've seen in the past decade or so, and Dancing really isn't much worse on the list than many of them. Let's put it this way. In a movie, I control what you see, the angle of your viewing, etc. In a movie, I can imply in a PG-13 situation that these two characters are going to have sex: I show the woman's bare back. We could do it like in Dirty Dancing: Baby takes off her shirt to reveal her bra. Camera closes in on the guy's hand going up Baby's back, and then he flicks the bra strap open. Camera cuts to black. You do the math of what happens next, or you don't. In a story, I don't have control over your visual past a certain point, and the more oblique I am, the more there's potential for your interpretation:

That wasn't a bad thing; not a bad thing at all. Hard to beat being having Tetsu's undivided attention. Keegan stretched, chuckling at the ticklish sensation of Tetsu's tongue and fingers meandering across his belly, and arched his back so Tetsu could slide Keegan's jeans off his hips.

Okay. Is Keegan wearing underwear? If he is, it's PG-13. Hell, it could be PG. If he's not? PG-13 with judicious camera angles. R with slightly more provocative angles. But those lines don't say. This is where I feel firmly that if you read a story and say, "that's R-rated!" then there's a chance some of that's in your head. I didn't put it on the page, one way or another. I just implied. Up to you what that implication means.

And some things will go right over people's heads. Drug terminology, for instance; it's a localized, cultural thing. It's like saying to American kids in a brit accent, "got a fag?" No matter what the American kids are like, there's going to be a moment of cognitive dissonance because the lingo doesn't match. I have drug references here and there in Dancing, and again in Sunrise. I betcha the majority are too subtle, and go right over the heads of some folks. However, Garrett likes to get stoned sometimes. If two out of ten people get the offhand comment, does that make the story R? If someone has no issue with homosexual relationships, latenight clubbing for underagers, or premarital sex, but is highly sensitive about drug use being bad, mmkay, is it my problem if this one minor (to me) detail makes the reader toss the book?

I know why I write, and it's not because I want to write the Great American Novel. And it's not really because I want to get rich. (I'm not stupid; I know I'm currently making three times as much as the average low-to-mid-list writer would if s/he tried to live full time off writing advances and royalties.) I write these stories because I can't find them anywhere else. If there were a published author out there writing stories like mine and I liked the author's style and characters and setting, I wouldn't need to write. It'd be there, already, for me to enjoy! But it's not. Oh, there are writers who get this part, or that, but I want it all in one set o' characters. One story, or more, if the characters can hold up.

I want a club scene that remembers there's work involved, and that the job is actually pretty boring with sudden bursts of rare action but limited at that. I want people who cuss, smoke, drink, and drive like bats out of hell. I want bikers who know how to work on their bikes--and do. I want more than just a passel of goddamn british fairies interacting with the local folk; I want more than just the indigenous people interacting with modern folk. I want multiculturalism to the same degree I get in my work life: Hindu, Japanese, Chinese, Kenyan, Lebanese, Yemeni, Brazilian, Inuit, Russsian, Danish. I want sax and violins. The latter because I like action; the former because I'm an adult, damn it, and I have a sexuality and I like characters who haven't repressed or just forgotten that they have hormones, too. What I really want? I want the hard questions playing in the metaphor of urban fantasy.

There's a story by Charles DeLint, hrm, Jack of Kilrowan, I think it is. (Excellent example of horrendous cover: shows a rather Art Deco woman with flowy long hair looking all graceful; the lead character chops off her hip-length hair in the first paragraph of the story. Uh, sure, the artist really read that novel before illustrating.) Anyway, over the course of the first novella, our female protagonist meets and eventually falls for a handsome young fey-prince. At the end of the story, they kiss and the novella's over. That's where we fade to black, like many romantic stories do: we imagine them sailing off into the sunset, blah blah blah. The copy I have is both novellas in one, and when the second story opened, I was all primed: what does it mean to be human and be romantically involved with someone non-human? What are the implications? What do you tell your family? What does s/he tell his/hers? How do you have to change to adapt to such an innate, more-than-just-cultural difference?

And what happens? The character shirks. DeLint set it up in the first novella, that she's uncertain about committment, I felt like saying: come on, you said she was committment-uncertain because she didn't "fit" with so-called normal guys, and you spent 50K words convincing me these two were an odd if delightful fit. And then you what? You copped out! So the second novella skirts that issue by having the male romantic lead basically persona non arounda for 50K. It's still a good story, but dissatisfying because it just wasn't gutsy enough, IMO.

That's why I'll say my stories are R-rated, because if that's where the story goes, that's where I'll chase it. I don't want to say, "I shouldn't write above a certain point," and hearing it from anyone can, will, and does make me one thoroughly-pissed off person. You have to tread very, very carefully when it comes to suggesting to me that I tone things down. I would much rather throw everything in, and make the choice on my own what works or doesn't work for the story; using the story itself to justify your critique is possibly the only way to avoid that knee-jerk "fuck off!" reaction.

Now, the thing is, no one person should take that last paragraph too personally, and no, I don't want to see any apologies. (Don't say sorry; just fix it, damn it.) I think nonwriters forget this, or forget there are some liberties you simply can't take -- well, you can take them, but the writer isn't going to respond in a pretty manner. I try to be careful around other authors, the rare times I'm tempted to say such, except for the rare authors that I know well enough and with whom I'm sympatico; I can list them on one hand. It has a great deal to do with the time and energy we've spent critting each other's work, I think. They know I may suggest but that I respect their boundaries, because it's something I grapple with myself. Getting such comments from folks who don't write, and haven't even read? Yeah. I get annoyed. Highly annoyed.

Ratings might be good for someone going blind into a movie who's highly particular about whether they see a set o' nekkid boobies, or hear a bad word, or see blood 'n gore 'n chainsaws slicing hyundais. But it's ridiculous in fiction, because when I fall in love with a character, I want explicit. I don't want to be deprived of that character's insides and outsides any more than I can conceive of being deprived of any of my lovers' insides and outsides. When I find a character I love, I want to devour him or her, whole. So... yeah. Me, explicit writer. Deal, and more importantly, don't frickin' tell me to tone it down. I won't listen. I'm too busy trying to go deep.

Maybe I'll go write a scene now where Tetsu jacks off. That might make me feel less cranky.

(yes, long long day at work. gee, could you tell?)

Comments

[betty-m.livejournal.com]

I'd be wary of putting any rating on it. Your beta readers should just know that this is not a young adult novel you're writing here. It has fantastical elements, and adults doing adult things, and teens trying to be adults, and, sex and violence, but nothing pruirient or unecessary to the plot.

Oh well. I hear your rant and raise you two n-words and about 2 dozen mf's. What's the rating for my wips?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

hmmm. I'd say Soul Seeder is rated I for intense, and Indefensible is C for compelling.

Besides, if you ever wrote a line where Kray says, "Oh, darn," I think I'll laugh myself silly, and then I'll make a note to thwap you when we meet for lunch. Yeeeeah, right. But that's what I like about your characters; they're raw and rough and hardly socially acceptable in my daily work world but damn if they aren't interesting because they're real. ;D

[betty-m.livejournal.com]

Well Drat Sol, Kray can go out in public. He knows standard English. He just doesn't like to use it. LOL It's BOOOORRRRRING!!!

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Your beta readers should just know that this is not a young adult novel you're writing here.

Hee. Those YA novels, they're pretty daring these days!

(Which isn't to say that this book is or ought to be one. Just saying.)

[sarolynne.livejournal.com]

There's very little I could add to that. Seriously, I think you've got most of it covered.

So I will sit here and nod knowingly, because that is all so true.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

You're just busy contemplating rattling brains. Can't fool me.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

As you all know (is there anybody in the Western hemisphere who DOESN'T know it?) I'm against ratings. I do it because list mods and archivists want me to and I play by the rules when in other people's sandboxes and also because I prefer doing it myself to having someone else slap a label on my stories.

Case in point: One story was R-rated by an archivist because of "cross-dressing and sexual references". Yah, the cross-dressing was only a major plot-point, thanks for giving that away in the blurb. And with Beckham in the world, wearing a skirt isn't really that risqué anymore.

Anyway, I R-rate all my online stuff, because I think that if people can't deal with an R-rated story, they shouldn't be reading what I write.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

That's why I've usually said Dancing is R-rated. It's easier. And probably less offensive than saying, "look, it's for adults, and if you're physically old enough but not mature enough, don't read it, and save us both the grief when you get all shocked an' crap."

I do find it amusing, working on an archives, when folks have sent me story after story and they're all NC-17, and not a bloody one would get more than PG-13 (if that much) from the MPAA. Talk about inflating just to catch the audience's eye.

Yes, a skirt on a guy. Boy, that's walking the edge. Puhleeeese, Robert Smith did that twenty years ago. But then, the last one-shot I did had crossdressing, and it was odd how many people shied away from it for fear crossdressing=girlifying. I always find it amusing when people mix gender issues with external dress, as if the two had any relation...but that's a tangent for a different rant!

Let's have a big round of applause

[bonniers.livejournal.com]

I've had a lot of trouble since I got kicked out of a public forum for posting a story that dealt with homosexuality. Two friends who happened to be gay faced family for a holiday, and it was really pretty bland and boring (rated B for Bad :) ). No sex in the story. But they were homosexual, and homosexuality is verboten in a lot of places.

The whole thing came as a big shock because on the whole I'm a pretty mild-mannered person and my characters are not rude boys. Working class and middle class, mostly. Those just aren't the kinds of stories I tell. I hope they're intense and mean something, and I certainly won't back off whatever language is necessary if that's what the character uses. But it's really got very little bearing on whether the story is any good.

And it's all the author's choice. If a reader doesn't like it, they can read a different book.

--bonnie

awww ;D

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Slobbit mentioned the same thing about the group that gave her the cold shoulder for having a bisexual character. Oddly, reading her drafts, getting away from that group has let her really muscle her way in deeper to Yoshi (although if he doesn't take over the story, I'd be very, very surprised...some characters do!). I can still be thrown into mildly cranky spastic fits by mention of Teh Gey Card, like that damn reviewer on FM. Thanks, bitch. Sheesh.

Thing is, I'm not really sure my boys are rude in the classic sense. I guess they're more rude in that they really don't give a damn what the rest of the world thinks of them. Was it Mellencamp's lyrics? Yeah. "I do things my way and I pay a high price." Oddly, the rest of the world does tend to see such independence as rude or uncultured, but if you're willing to pay the price...

I dunno. We all chase the oddest characters, don't we?

[dark-geisha.livejournal.com]

I've had a lot of trouble since I got kicked out of a public forum for posting a story that dealt with homosexuality.

Is that why you asked me about the appropriate rating for your stories before your first post on Manic Medley? (Before, you know, I re-found the list of ratings on FM.) I never knew.

I remember getting really pissy when Kathy (piney) related the story of the writing instructor slamming her YA WIP, because--heaven forbid--it dealt with the subject of cutting.

[pixiepilot.livejournal.com]

*nods* Artists and writers are the same. Never let even your most cherished fans dictate your work. If they don't like it, they don't need to view it. If they want something else, they should go somewhere else. I've turned down commissions because it's not what I do. I do what I like, and it'll find it's place in the market, or it won't. Either way, I'm fine with that.

Ratings can be useful for some things, but they can be very unhelpful, even when spicific. I don't expect ratings for written work. If the fiction turns out to be something I didn't expect and don't enjoy, it's simple - I stop reading. I'm certainly not going to pin responsibility for informing me of everything up front on the author. That's just ridiculous.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Agreed, and I'm not saying I've even remotely contemplated writing a story that should be one thing and toning it down (or even up) if that's not where the story should go. But it doesn't change the fact that there are a limited few people who can even remotely suggest it to me and not get bared teeth. Just FYI, babe. ;D

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and Watership Down was PG

*shivers* That gave me nightmares the first time I read it. The part with the destruction of the warren was... Oy. And yet I wouldn't have rated it above a PG either.

All this mixed with the funny thing where the MPAA's in-house lawyers were apparently bored a while ago and started sending out copyright violation notices to people for using the MPAA system without warning.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yah. I looked up on that, and the deal with MPAA is that G, PG, PG-13, and R were never protected trademarks. They never actively sought to keep people from applying it, so the only thing left to protect is NC-17, and it's NC-17 that's the source of their cease-and-desist letters. Frankly, I think it's absolutely ridiculous; after a point, it's a bit late to try and snag each of us every time we say we're going to xerox something or ask for a kleenex.

As for Watership Down, I watched it in 4th grade, after reading the book. (In our house, to watch a movie, you had to read the book first and tell the folks what the book was about--mini-book report--and then you'd get to stay up late to watch the movie.) My sister watched it with me, unbeknownst to my mother IIRC, and when they got to the part gassing the rabbits? Poor Klho just freaked. Totally. Absolutely went into a fit, but she was in kindergarten or first grade, I think. Mom was furious with me for letting her watch and not warning her, or telling the parents. Sheesh. So I got sent to bed, too, and didn't see the entire thing uninterrupted until I was in college...

parents!

[dark-geisha.livejournal.com]

I've never really believed in rating fiction of any kind. Maybe it's because my parents never stopped me from reading any books and let me watch R-rated movies with them when I was little. Violence was okay, but when it came to sex, they'd pull the "Cover your eyes!" deal. For an 8-year-old, that's a reasonable stance for a parent to take with their child.

Back when I was involved in the old school Rurouni Kenshin fandom, we only ever gave warnings if there was sex (or as people used "adult romance") but this G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 stuff? I never had a clue how to rate stuff. If anything, I've found people tend to err on the side of ultra-conservative. They rate anything with sex as NC-17, even though it wasn't explicit or graphic and fell more into the vague descriptor category.

Anyway, I personally believe you can write anything as long as it works. It will work for some people. It won't for others. I know someone who got so offended at a particular scene in Neil Gaiman's American Gods that they stopped reading the book. As myself, I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. It was such a minor scene in that novel that it boggled my mind that someone would stop reading because of it. But that's always a risk with novels and really, for every person who likes a novel, there's another who hates it.

Like Bonnie said, if the reader doesn't like it, they'll stop and find a different book to read.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I put up a slightly altered MPAA suggested guidelines on an archives, because most people are pretty clueless about it. And in fanfiction, where people have verrrrry specific interests and delineations in what they want to read, I can see the value. When it comes to original fiction, I think there's more leeway.

And yeah about the limits for kids. This is why my parents had me read first, before I could see the movie. If I couldn't make it through the book, I couldn't make it through the movie--at least I guess that was their reasoning. Then I read Shogun (in fourth grade) and that kinda blew that theory. Heh.

[bonniers.livejournal.com]

I know someone who got so offended at a particular scene in Neil Gaiman's American Gods that they stopped reading the book. As myself, I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. It was such a minor scene in that novel that it boggled my mind that someone would stop reading because of it.

*blinks*. Huh? What scene would that be?

I mean, the whole thing is pretty intense. There were times I had to put it down and take a break just to get my bearings back. And I didn't like the ending, but that's another subject. But I don't remember any particular scene being more offensive than others.

--bonnie

[ex-saraswath377.livejournal.com]

I think you can get away with much more in fiction than you can in movies anyway. Novel writing isn't like fanfic where everyone's clamoring for more porn, but you don't really have ratings on books other than "Child", "Young Adult", and "Adult", and the former two have a significant amount of crossover. Hell, even genres have a lot of crossover: my favorite author is alternately in the plain fiction and sci-fi/fantasy sections, and reading what I have of you I'd say you'd probably be too. In this day and age, readers are generally liberal people, so you can get away with almost anything without complaint since they don't see anything to complain about.

You shouldn't have to change your story unless there's a significant story flaw or something is becoming too long-winded or some other GOOD reason to change it. One of the few things they tell us that I think is actually useful in class is that you need to be as honest as possible, both with yourself and with your characters. And if that involves sex, if that involves violence - so what?

[ex-saraswath377.livejournal.com]

the former two

and by that I meant latter two. aaaargh.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hell yeah people clamor for more porn in fiction--why else do you think there's such a massive online fanfiction porn-based genre? The writers don't write it, and the readers want it, so they do the same as me: they write it themselves. Hey, pot, nice to meet you, name's kettle. *poke*

One of the few things they tell us that I think is actually useful in class is that you need to be as honest as possible, both with yourself and with your characters. And if that involves sex, if that involves violence - so what?

Y'know, to think I began Dancing as a test to see if I could write a story with gratuitous violence, that happens as easy and often as it did when I lived in the city. Within a few chapters, that one fell through. Not because I couldn't, but because the story didn't work: you'd be looking for the reason behind it, the thread, the plotline that would make it make sense. Twain was right about truth being stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense. ;D

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

The more I hear about this Dancing book, the more interesting it sounds.

That's all!

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

:D

[elanivalae.livejournal.com]

Wow. Normally when I read a rant, I feel the need to kick in my two cents, but you really nailed that one. I completely agree.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

But I like when you kick in your two cents! You, Saro, Sin, and Lyko are my rant-gods. (And Askerian when she gets going, but that's been rare recently.)

I'm still waiting on Saro's rant on the missionary position. *snark*