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

Julie,

If you were to write a story that we considered to be rated NC-17, you are correct that you would not be allowed to post it to our boards, since you would not be allowed access to the Nfic folder. Your options would be to post it to some other fanfic forum (like ff.net; do they still take NC-17 stories?) or to post it to your own website and advertise its existance to point people to it.

Personally (though I'm pretty sure yours was a rhetorical question and you don't have such a story), I doubt there would be much of an audience for an L&C story that was rated NC-17 for violence. IMO, overly violent stories don't fit with L&C the way they might in other fandoms (like say, Xfiles) and are rare enough that we require violence warnings on the files when we post them to the Archive (for PG-13 stories).

As for the topic itself, though, I don't have much of a preference with what we call the nfic folder -- I think the term "nfic" has been around for so long that the original definition of the "n" has lost its meaning, but if people want to rename it "Beyond PG-13" because they don't like the term "nfic", it really doesn't matter to me one way or the other. But I do agree with many of the points that have been stated in this thread already, that renaming the folder would be a matter of semantics only, and that nfic-avoiders, as a rule, aren't going to visit the Nfic folder for violent or other types of NC-17 stories if they won't visit it for sexual ones. Or those that would visit would be willing to visit the folder based on word-of-mouth recommendations now anyway, and a change a name isn't going to affect their decision one way or the other.

Interesting discussion,

Kathy

Hi FoLCs!

The nFic and nKerth Crews wanted to add our 2 cents to the recent discussions on defining nfic. We discussed and agreed that our interpretation of nfic is any story with a higher rating than PG-13, with or without sexual content. The 2000 nKerth site already reflected this definition. By clarifying this on the nFic directory and latest nKerth page we hope this will increase the number of eligible stories for the next nKerths. And we are more than willing to change and/or add categories appropriately and with FoLC input.

The Kerth Committee can correct us on this, but our understanding of why there isn't an nFic category in the Kerths, since the first year, is so that the unique categories represented by the nFic stories written can be better recognized in a ceremony of their own and to prevent the Kerth Ceremony from being unreasonably long.

Not only was there a category for Best Nfic Story in the 1998 Kerth Awards, but many stories that only had nfic versions available were nominated in other categories (Drama, Alt Story, Series, Round Robin, Waffy, and Overall). Check out http://users.erols.com/nightsky/Kerths/kerth98.html for further details. Before the 1999 Kerth Awards started, the decision was made to have a separate nKerth Awards because it was felt that stories that had limited distribution because of their ratings had a strong disadvantage in the Kerth voting.

Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions?
The combined efforts of the nKerth and nFic Crews

Just for the record and as best as I can recall, this is exactly right. We didn't think it was fair to put nfic stories in the same categories with pgfic stories, as nfic audiences are more limited, but then just having one "best nfic" category was way too broad. And if we broke it out to "best waffy/best comedy/best drama/most sensuous/whatever, etc." then we'd be there all night

It just seemed to make a lot more sense to have the nfic stories have an entirely separate set of awards, and Dawn and crew were brave enough to take them on.

PJ
speaking for herself and not necessarily for the rest of the Kerth Committee

I think that the difference between now and 1999 is the number of stories eligible for the nkerths and the number of people who participate in the ceremony. I don't have the exact numbers but I do know that the participation levels have dropped dramatically.

While I'm sure it made sense four years ago to separate the ceremonies and honor the unique categories, I just don't think that there are enough stories to necessitate this anymore. On the ballot this year, three authors were responsible for 25 of the 54 nominations. I really believe that by adding one or two nfic specific categories to the kerth ballot, we could do justice to the eligible nfic stories.

One or two categories would not make the kerth ballot/ceremony substantially longer than it already is. Readers who don't enjoy or can't for legal reasons read nfic, could easily skip those categories when nominating/voting. They would be in no way compelled to read those stories.

As for stories that have only a nfic version suffering in general, I think that's something writers will just have to deal with. Like any genre, there are readers who do and do not enjoy those types of stories. Writers are aware of that when they write their stories.

Annie