Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Nfic/Mature Audience Fanfic?

What do you think of when you see the term ‘nfic’? Stories with sexual content? Or do you see it more broadly, as stories which go beyond PG13 for a variety of reasons, which may include more detailed descriptions of sex but also degrees of violence, language, darker themes and so on - the same sort of thing which would give a film an R/NC17 (15/18) rating?

We’ve been having a discussion over in the nfic folder on the nature of nfic, and it’s been suggested that this is really a subject which non-nfic readers might have an input into. The problem, as it’s arisen is this: because the traditional understanding of nfic is stories which have a sexual content - after all, ‘nfic’ is actually short for ‘naughty fanfiction’ - authors who write non-PG13 stories which aren’t particularly sexual in content find themselves wondering where they should be posted. We’ve had a few examples lately - a couple of authors posting to ask whether their beyond-PG13 story actually should be posted in the nfic folder given its lack of ‘sex’ content, other authors posting stories with very little ‘sex’ content feeling uncomfortable at reader comments asking when the ‘action’ is going to occur, since there has to be a reason why the story was posted in that folder. One author even withdrew her story from consideration at the nKerths because, in her view, since it had very little sexual content, it shouldn’t be eligible.

Some authors have even posted what were almost apologetic disclaimers explaining that, although their story was being posted in the nfic folder, this was because of other content issues and not particularly because of sex scenes. One such author commented, in the debate in the nfic folder, that what she would like is a situation where that’s no longer needed.

So there’s been a discussion as to exactly what our understanding of nfic should be - how do we broaden the perception of nfic so that readers are aware that stories won’t necessarily have more or less explicit lovemaking? I’m summarising the discussion here, but if anyone who’s already contributed wants to repost their comments here that would be great.

One suggestion for broadening the understanding of what nfic is all about is simply a statement across the top of the folder making this clear. However, a more radical suggestion is for a change of name for ‘beyond-PG13’ fanfic - a rebranding to encourage a change of perception.

One suggested name-change is to 'Mature Audience Fanfic' - this comes from the US designation for television content which is beyond the TV14 rating - ie what gets shown in prime-time. Another suggestion is simply 'Beyond PG-13 Fanfic'. There has been debate both for and against such a change - a couple of people, myself included, commented that as we were never very fond of ‘nfic’ as a label anyway we’d be happy to see a change. Others are less persuaded of the need for a name-change and would prefer to try to change perceptions in other ways.

So why post this topic here? Well, we did want to know what non-nfic readers think - the question I posed at the beginning is part of it. There are some over-18s who choose not to read nfic because - as a couple explained in the recent polls topic - they aren’t interested in stories including sex. So would some of you read other ‘mature audience’ stories if you knew they weren’t focused on more-or-less explicit sex? Or not? Do you care what we call beyond-PG13 stories? Is this all irrelevant to you?

Oh, and this thread isn’t only for non-nfic readers - we want a wide discussion so that if any change is contemplated it’s accepted by as many people as possible. Equally, it’s possible that simply by airing the issues the problem will be resolved anyway as people’s perceptions will have been challenged and altered.

Thoughts?


Wendy

Wendy, I think this might be a case of much ado about nothing. I've never felt that there was a misconception of what nfic meant. I've always understood that there were reasons that a story could be classified nfic that had nothing to do with sex. Mature themes (though that in itself is a cloudy label), more graphic language and violence were generally understood to be a possible component of an nfic.

But for the most part. Reality IS perception. The vast majority of nfic stories are there because of more explicit sexual content. Am I wrong?

I think that those of us who don't frequent the nfic boards because we don't need to read more explicit sex, wouldn't be likely to 'register' just on the off chance that a story might appear that was there because of other mature content. The truth of the matter is, there ain't a lot of the other type out there.

You speak of writer's who are intimidated away from posting a more mature story without the sexual content because of the general perception. Well, that's going to be the case until a time comes that the body of stories aren't so skewed in that direction. No amount of disclaimer headings or name alterations will change that.

It has to be up to the individual writer to ascertain whether or not their story needs the extra freedom of a more mature format (whether there be sexual content or not) or it can be edited to a PG13 form. And it will be up to the gentle nreaders if they wish to embrace a non-PG13 story without the sex.

It will only happen if there are some 'brave' writers out there who wish to get the ball rolling. Once there are a few stories out there that shun the sex but go for the jugular in other ways, more will follow. If this happens then, inevitably, over time, it will no longer even be an issue to contemplate.

Tank (who knows that there are some out there who think that he'd be a candidate for such a non-sexual mature-themed story, but he isn't sure that it's necessary to go beyond PG13 for Lois and Clark)

What I use to think is that nfics are stories with content beyond PG-13. Including both sex and violence.

However, I understand the point of view of people that regard nfics mostly as stories of sexual content. I don't have access to nfic, so I can't tell for sure. But, judging by what I read in gfic folders, as WAFFy and sentimental gfics are much more than adventure gfics, I could guess that nfics with sexual content are much more than the ones with violent content.

I'm not sure about how much a name change would help. I think that, if someone had been a nfic reader for year and had developped that opinion, even if the name of nfic was changed, their mentality would remain the same.
As for the terms 'beyond-PG13 fanfic' and 'Mature Audience Fanfic', I think they both have a big disadvantage in comparison with 'nfic': They're too long. I don't have any ideas about what else could be a title, but maybe someone else can be more creative than me.

If, however, the previously mentioned by Wendy and me ideas don't change the perspective, my opinion of posting stories with violent content would be posting them in the gfic folders with a warning in the title, (under the condition that it doesn't contain particularly sexual scenes). For example, a story titled 'A Different Murder' (random title) could be posted under the title of"+PG-13: A Different Murder", where +PG-13 would represent its beyond PG-13 content. This way, someone could be able to choose whether to read it or not.

In my opinion, young, sensitive people could be hurt inside if they read something violent. With sexual content, though, the problem isn't about getting hurt; it's about getting annoyed. If I, in the story I write, put here and there an occasional smoochie and then I just don't feel like re-reading and editing it, how am I supposed to bear reading a love scene, or even worse, a story that's just about L&C making love? (And that's not just a manner of speaking, it really happened.)
The difference between getting hurt by a story and getting annoyed by another is that getting hurt is more bearable. What I mean is, that someone who isn't particularly sensitive, or, in any case, can stand reading about headless corpses and who knows what else, should be allowed to read something if they feel they can stand reading it, even if they're underagers. On the other hand, no one would like to read a story that would annoy them. How much of a masochist can one be?
Someone else, though, could point out that nowadays many underagers are looking everywhere they can for sexual content of any kind. I'm very well aware of that - heck, I have girls and boys in my class that have had sex themselves already. But I don't think that, if an underager is looking for porn, they'll search here.

Last, here's the system of TV programmes and movies used in Greece:

Rhombus in green circle: Programme suitable for everyone.
Circle in blue circle: Programme suitable for everyone - parental consent desired.
Triangle in orange circle: Programme suitable for everyone - parental consent necessary.
Square in purple circle: Programme suitable for everyone older than 15.
X in red circle: Only suitable for adults.

Practically, though, only porn movies get an X. Programmes of shokingly violent content, such as The X-files , get squares(1). Squares also get the movies that do contain sex scenes but are not pornographic, such as Irréversible .

I think that can give you another opinion.

I'm not sure whether I was clear enough. I hope you get my meaning.
Feel free to point out anything you may disagree with.
See ya,
AnnaBtG.

(1) There is another excellent example of a violent movie that was rated with a square, but I don't know its title in English. It was a movie filmed a few years ago, about a boy that could see the others' death before it happened... A sequel was filmed recently.

EDITED:
Just saw Tank's post, and I have to say that I agree with the points he makes.

I've mostly seen it as those stories including more sexual aspects, but that's mainly because...well...that's how it usually is.

Maybe we could leave the n-fic folder for that, and create a mature audience folder for those stories that are more than PG-13, but not "naughty". That way those that aren't registered in the nfic section because they don't want to read the "naughty" fics, can still see and read the fics that are more than PG-13 for some other reason.

-Breanna

I thought about that too, Breanna - but, even if setting up a folder for them wouldn't be that difficult, I think that turning them into a new kind of stories would create problems such as 'Do we need a new Archive for them?' and 'What about the already written and posted/submitted stories?'

Just a thought,
AnnaBtG.

The thing that strikes me is that there are already stories in the archive with dark themes such as Becky Bain's 'In a Dark Time' or Stopquitdont's 'What Makes a Man?'

I don't believe either were posted in installments here (too busy to double-check) but would they not have been welcome here?

As in every type of story, those who want to read, will and those who aren't interested, won't.

Irene

i guess the question to me is "how common are stories with an above pg-13 rating but little to no sexual content?" is it enough to warrant a change? is the change something people want anyway? are there enough such stories to warrant a new folder?

i mean, if the problem is that authors are having trouble reaching the correct audience, then i don't see what good renaming the folder is going to do.

if it's not that much of a problem, then let it be, and let people's perceptions change with the content.

if there are enough stories that people going to nfic are not finding what they expect or that people interested in more mature stories of a non-sexual nature don't know where to look (or something along those lines), then maybe we should make a new folder. leave nfic for nfic, and create a new folder called rfic. might be worth a try as an experiment, like we did with OF.

personally, i don't read much nfic, and i'm not really one for darkness and violence, so i'm just happy to have the gfic folder. whatever happens on the other side of things... <shrug>

Paul

/me thinks back to discussion in Kathy's poll

I still regard it as mostly sexual content but it's always abvious that there ARE reasons other than that for it to be rated R, unless it was titled "XXX fic" or something.
Though Paul makes a good point: how many are there that have little to do with sex?

Julie

Honestly, it would be nice to change the name, but I really can't think of anything that would suit it any better. I really haven't seen much non-sexual beyond PG-13 fic. However, Nfic...when I think about it as 'naughty' fic...I don't know, personally it's a little over the top for me. Even though the nfic portions don't add anything to the story for me, I've never really seen them as naughty or anything. It's just another type of writing to me. I read 'em once in a blue moon. So I don't know. It would really amuse me for some reason if we changed the name to mfic (M for mature). Don't mind me though. It's midnight, the time of night where everything becomes amusing to me. Nfic is such a veteran name for me, even if I don't always think it accurately describes the genre.


JD

Already an interesting debate, I see. I figure in this case that was a relief to readers rather than a disappointment.

And, yes, I withdrew Masques from the nKerths. It wasn't essentially because of it's lack of lovemaking scenes though. More a sense that it shouldn't have been in nfic at all, for any reason. When I began posting Masques, I believed that there were some scenes that were beyond pg13 because they dealt with slightly more adult, darker themes. I was even concerned at that point that some scenes would be so difficult to convert that I might have trouble converting them at all. :rolleyes: So, what do I know? Not a lot as it turned out. <g>

So I posted both in gfic and nfic, expecting to convert as I went.

However, along the way I was surprised to find that with each new scene I had marked for conversion, my betas were telling me they were pg13. And in the end, in what turned out to be an epic, there were only something like 8 pages total difference in page count between the two versions of the story.

If I had known that would be the way it would turn out, I'd have only posted a pg13 version from the start and wouldn't have posted in the nfic folder at all. Those eight pages were made up of odd lines here and there, paragraphs at most, rather than whole scenes and I could easily have excised them and lost nothing from the story plot.

So when the nkerths rolled around, I really felt that it wasn't justified or right that Masques be in contention with other stories which had more right to be in the nfic folder than it had imo.

LabRat

Interesting to read the different opinions here. Going to add a couple of thoughts which are a bit of a ramble.

My perception is that, a few commonplace obscenities aside, nfic (as written by FoLCs) differs only from gfic in its sexually graphic content.

I can't think of any nfic that has more violence in it than what has appeared in some gfics. Of course, we Folcs are mild mannered folk, and I'm not sure there's a readership for the degree of perverse violence that might lead to an nfic rating. So far, the warnings at the beginning of gfics have served us pretty well, I think.

Now the word 'mature'. What does that mean?? Is it just graphic description of sex and/or violence, peppered with obscentities? Or does 'mature' imply the emphasis on certain themes like how people deal with death, or the loss of health, or poverty, or isolation or corruption or....?

Do 'mature' and 'adult' mean the same thing?

Some of the most 'immmature' fics I've read have been nfics (sometimes, delightfully so <g>)

Also, *who* will decide what 'mature' means?

And will the addtion of a 'mature fic' category mean that the archive will have to reclassify its stories into 'mature' and 'immature' fics?

CC Malo (a writer of immature fanfics - *ific*)

Well, speaking as one of those authors who has a) felt the need to apologise for the lack of sex in her nfic and b) has written stories which have a variety of themes which go beyond PG13 yet which are most definitely not 'all about sex', I strongly favour a name change for the category (I'm lobbying for Beyond-PG13 ) and a line of explanation on the main page.

Your point that a name change won't affect the split between sexy nfic and non-sexy nfic is a fair one, but I wonder in fact whether you're right or not. If a forum were labelled Beyond PG13, does that not send out a message that stories of all sorts are welcome in that forum? Perhaps even encourage other kinds of stories?

I'm not in favour of a separate folder for non-sexy nfics, because you end up not knowing where to put things - is a story with one sexy scene an nfic or a mature fic? Does it depend on the ratio of sexual narrative to non-sexual narrative? If a character is a bit colourful and uses rather explicitly sexual language in his normal conversation, where does that story go? Does it depend on whether the story is all about sex and relationships or something else entirely? Carol's list of questions also illustrates why a separate folder would be a problem.

Carol, btw, the archive wouldn't need to be reclassified, because the archive is PG13 and as far as I know, there is absolutely no intention of changing that.

Yvonne

As a name for above-PG13-rated fics, I think rfic is brilliant. It's catchy, easy to type, self-descriptive -- even those FOLCs who aren't too clear on what an American "R" rating means will quickly get the picture; it's for any story that's over the gfic line. The archive's been using that as a dividing line for years, so we've got a general idea.

PJ

Regardless of the n or r title, maybe the thing to do is to avoid using the words 'mature' and 'adult' as a descriptor for the folder because these terms are so open-ended, and also carry with them the implication that any story not in this particular folder is therefore immature and childish.
Instead the folder could state that it contains stories with explicit/graphic depictions of sex and/or violence, or those with coarse language.

C.

The term "mature" vs "adult" was actually from a comment I said. I mentioned that "adult fiction" makes me think of adult bookstores, and then pointed out the TV-MA rating, which is Mature Audience. Of course, then someone else pointed out that "mature" held the same connotation for them! Oops. I do like the Beyond PG-13, though.

As for current stories that aren't nfic but above PG-13, there probably aren't many. Why? Authors write for their audience. If they want to post in the gfic folder, they're going to tone down scene descriptions to make sure it fits in that folder. As pointed out, many readers and authors view the nfic folder as having sexual content. So they will be less likely to post it there.

If the nfic folder was renamed, it would remind authors that they don't always have to stay within the PG-13 limit. It may open up a whole new range of writing.

Karen's post prompted me to check the nfic folder (or whatever <g>) that parallels this one. Should have done that before making my earlier posts, of course.

Now I'm really confused about what people mean when they use 'mature' or 'adult' in the context of this thread. Based on what I've just read in the other folder, I'm thinking that people don't mean that the story *theme* is necessarily adult or mature, but that it could be any theme that is handled in such a way as to include sexually expicit scenes, or graphic violence, or "colourful" language. Thus the range of themes in the folder formerly known as "nfic" is no different than what exists in the Archive.

I also see from the examples used in the nfic thread that as a GE I've let things through that appear to be nfic. Oops.

So how about this? "The 18+" folder:
For any story that includes explicit sexual content, graphic violence, and /or coarse language (colourful colloquialisms?) This is similar to something Karen posted in the other thread, I think.

I'm not sure it really will make much difference if the folder title is changed but I do agree that the 'n' is a tad coy. I can also understand that writers who want to post in nfic might feel they are misleading readers when they don't deliver the expected ***** (censored my phrase here <g>) in most of their story posts.

C.

yvonne said:

yes, it does. but that's another can of worms. that's why i asked in my first post if that was a message that people wanted to send. i mean, sure, people don't have to read stories they don't like, and if certain types of stories don't have much of an audience, they probably won't be posted too much... the question is what kind of stories people want to write and what kind they want to see. figure out then what kinds of stories you want to encourage, i guess.

my thought with the seperate folder was that authors could look at the general tone/empahsis of the stories. then you could have an informal rule or something that romantic fics, romps, and the like could be posted in nfic, and stories with other focuses could be posted in rfic. just an idea.

speaking of which...

thanks, pam. it seemed to kinda jump out at me. it covers the bases, doesn't sound inherenly dirty or whatever, and is clear enough.

in any case, i'm still not sure about just changing the name. it does address part of the problem (that authors felt people had certain expectations of nfic), but there seems to be more to address... stories that have nfic scenes only towards the end, letting people find (or not find, as they prefer) stories that are above pg-13 but not because they contain lovemaking, stories that are above pg-13 for more than one reason...

not sure what to do with all that. just leave it up to the author's notes? create a system with the post icons (the angry one means it's a violent story, the blue one means it's more angsty in tone, the smiley one means... well, you get the idea)? or just leave things as they are and let people sort things out themselves (which is pretty much what we do with gfic)?

i dunno. what works best for people? any other ideas?

Paul

I am new here, so perhaps I should't be piping in on this discussion.. But here goes anyway.

I've read the Nfic at Anne's place, and it seems to me that the only difference is that the sex is more graphic. In fact, it's true what other people have noticed -- some stories are JUST sex (which is quite dull ).
I don't see the need to create more categories. The story descriptors here are quite accurate and provide a good guide as to violence, WHAM factor etc.
This is a well behaved group -- just the fact that this discussion is going on proves that !
So in the opinion of this novice reader -- carry on as you are !

Allie

Question: what if I were to write a story that is considered nfic? Not necessarily sex, but like you said, it could be just extremely violent or something. I can't post it there, therefore I can't post it anywhere, and even if I asked someone to post it there for me I wouldn't be able to see my FDK.


Julie

As if, Allie! We don't grade opinions by seniority here , so yours is as valid as anyone else's. Go for it anytime!

LabRat