Fanfiction.Net Drama!

June 2, 2004: Anonymous Fanfiction.net Review

I am dusgusted with your stoy "Vengence Quest."
The story is fine up until the rape scenes in chapter seven. Is that really appropriate for a PG-13 rating? Do you realize that most of the people who read Brian Jacques are between the ages of 10 and 13. My younger brother read this and was angry that you defiled his favorite author's works with THAT OBSCENITY and disgusted. I think you were more than descriptive enough with the scenes and personally I wish you would consider the repercussions of your improper ratings.
How DARE YOU put something like that into a fic about a popular children's series!

Apparently the individual complained to the fanfiction.net administrators, who took down Vengeance Quest. I had to re-upload it under an "R" rating, though I still think it fuzzes the line between PG-13 and R.. Rob from Terrouge wrote an article titled "Fanfiction Rantings: Prior Warning" because of it, and the ensuing comments were... entertaining, to say the least.

• Myrhakel: If you feel the need to write something perverted at least give it the proper rating. I'm seen some really graphic stuff rated G. People think that they'll get more reviews that way. It should be the responsibility of the author to rate their story correctly and if they can't they should be banned.
• Nyctalo: Does the story even still exist on Fanfiction.net? I tried looking up the story by title and by rating, but it's not there. I have found it on Snowspine's own website, though I haven't yet looked for the "questionable" parts.
• Rat73: From what I remember, snowspine hadn't decided whether or not to bother reposting it there at all, so I'm pretty sure it isn't there at the moment. Maybe snowy will drop in on this subject with something more definite. FYI, the story is also posted on the main Redwall story section of the RFF, either page 1 or 2 within that section.
• Sawney Rath: I wish Snowspine would rewrite the R sections of the story. But, I hear that they're just natrually sexual, so rephrase that to say, "Put something else there instead". It sounds like a good story and I would read it, but then I'll most likely get hooked and read the R Rated parts.
• Sturnus V: You know, I don't think the fact that it has R-Rated parts makes it unreadable. Things like rape happen in life, and you can't just cover your eyes to make it go away. Personally, I go with an old Ursula Vernon philosophy in this case: So, you're offended. I'm sorry you're offfended, but I'm not changing my views just because you say I should.
  As long as it isn't yiff-worthy kind of descriptions in the scene, it shouldn't be rated as such. Just mentioning a rape, or even describing it in vague details should -not- drive away the audience. That's ludicrous. (Forgive any misspellings, I'm a bit blah from too much excercise.)
• Tsarmina: Actually, the deal with the fic is it WAS NOT R-rated. Snowspine gave a correct rating of the story--it's just someone overreacted, whined like a nuisance, and the "lovely" (see: lazy) people at FF.net just took him on his word and deleted the story. In the end, it was just sloppy idiocy that the whole ordeal happened. The kid who read it seems to just have been angry that Snowy "defiled" his fandom.
  I'd definitely slap that kid upside the head if I felt he was worth the effort.
  • Myrhakel: That's a bit hasty Tsar .. when I was nine or ten if I had read a story like that I would have flamed the author.
    • Tsarmina: Yes. But that would have been your own fault, because the story was rated PG-13... So if you're under 13 and reading something the author is telling you is probably inapropriate for people under the age of 13...NOT the writer's fault, so deal with it. But people don't like taking responsibility for their own action
• Nyctalo: I've finally read the sections with 'graphic' content, and IMO, there's hardly anything graphically described at all. She handled the rape scene as vaguely as possible, focusing more on the pain and disgust of the situation than in the bodily details. Even though she deals with adult issues like rape and homosexuality, she does so very maturely. It's the kid's fault that he read the story. Any idiot should know that fanfiction often takes liberal steps away from the source material. :S
  • Myrhakel: The nice thing to do is to explain the rating at the beginning of the story.
    • Tsarmina: I agree that that's a good choice, but most writers don't take that path. Really, the only time I've seen that is smut-fics that give you warnings for the kind of smut in a certain chapter... Overall, most writers seem to assume the reader can decide for themselves if they want to read a PG-13 story, or an R story, and be able to handle any of the content along with it.
    • Rat73: I never saw the version on fanfiction.net, as it had already been removed by the time the issue I wrote about came up. However, on the RFF, which is less strict about ratings and such anyway, she clearly warns about the 'adult content' in several places, including at the beginning of the story.
• Highwing: I was gonna say much the same thing Nyctalo said, but s/he beat me to the punch. The scenes in question deal with R-rated themes, but handle them with an expert subtlety that probably makes them appropriate for a PG-13 audience. In fact, I think if children under the age of 9 or 10 read "Vengeance Quest," a lot of what's going on in those scenes might go right over their heads. They'd glean that something bad and violent was happening, but not the details, since Snowspine softpedals them. Of course, one of the whole points of Rob's article is that these ratings systems are subjective in the extreme and wide open to interpretation. Snowy undoubtedly thought she'd rated her fanfic appropriately; a reader strongly disagreed, as I suppose is their right, and raised a stink. Such things happen in a free and open society - and you can't get much freer and more open than the Internet.
  Another thing to keep in mind is that Snowy has been writing "VQ" in fits and starts over the course of several years now. It started off as a much more traditional Redwall fanfic than it's become in the last few chapters, with an heroic, vengeance-seeking squirrel protagonist, lots of goodhearted woodlanders and villainous vermin who could have come straight from BJ's books. Even when some "good vermin" appear around Chapter 4 or 5, the tone remains very traditional. It's only from Chapter 5 onward (the story's currently up to the middle of Chapter 8), when the heroine Riala shows a very dark side and we delve into the complexities of horde life, that heavy shades of gray appear, making "VQ" far more nuanced than the average work of RFF. With this in mind, Chapters 1-4 probably stand squarely in PG territory (which is to say, nothing you wouldn't find in the official novels); a violent scene at the end of Chapter 5 might tip it over into PG-13 territory; and the following two chapters deal with material that might warrant an R rating if it was more graphically described, but could easily pass with the milder rating.
  I have every intention of spotlighting "VQ" in one of my future monthly Terrouge columns. As soon as Snowy completes it - which should be any month now - it will be eligible for inclusion, since at this time I'm trying to stay away from the many incomplete fanfics which litter the ROC. It stands as one of my all-time favorite Redwall fanfics, and I feel it deserves as wide a readership as possible. Just be forewarned that some of the subject matter veers into adult territory, and keeping that in mind, I doubt very many true Redwall fans will be disappointed.
• griever: Ideally, Fanfiction.net should change their whole rating system. It provides way too many freedoms - what may be considered obscene or explicit in one section of the world may not be considered the same in another part. In addition, their way of handling such incidents was disappointing. Removing one story because of one report, instead of five or ten, is hardly enough to say that, overall, the story was mis-rated.
  This is the main reason why I dislike large, online automated fanfiction sites.
  However, when writing with themes of sex, homosexuality, and rape, the author must be sensitive to the fact that not everyone shares the same views on the appropriateness of those issues in children's literature. Even the most well-written, non-graphic pieces of work can fall under harsh scrutiny. I don't believe pointing fingers at the child and the fanfiction.net administrators is very productive; every party involved should be held responsible to some degree.
• Lilac: This may not be entirely relevant, but from the end of Chapter Five onwards Vengeance Quest is the best fanfic I ever read. It has extraordinary character development and the most incredible poetry.
  Some woodlanders are raped. An innocent stoat is killed by being chopped into small pieces. Then there's the most harrowing (but most impressive) scene I've found in any fanfic to date, which involves assorted physical and mental tortures including homosexual rape. It is, undeniably, pretty strong stuff. I'm not familiar with American ratings, but you get some pretty immature thirteen-year-olds, and if R is the next rating up from PG then yeah, I'd say rate it R. But it's not really that bad. The stoat-chopping is the most graphic and worrying bit - the sexual themes are very carefully non-explicit, and nothing is gratutious. Certainly I'd let my twelve-year-old brother read it, but he has an IQ of something like 170 (yes, really, I've got the documentation,) so that's not much of a guide.
  Some writing has to be higher than PG-rated, for the simple reason that life is. Snowspine's a good enough writer to carry it off. The only part I find objectionable in its own right is the stoat-chopping scene at the end of Chapter 5, and I'm not too worried about that either (and it is important to Riala's development). But it probably does need a higher rating than PG.
  I wonder if this controversy will make more people read VQ? Hope it does. Anyone out there mature enough to handle things more than PG-rated (most of Terrouge, I presume), please read it. The first four chapters are nothing special, but trust me, it turns into something quite extraordinary.
  • Rat73: Actually, the American rating system has a PG-13 after PG, and that was what snowspine used for this story. PG-13 can have sexual and violent content under this system.
• Myrhakel: FFN seems to be going on a witch hunt at the moment. Tons of stories and accounts have been deleted, a lot of them due to unfounded complaints. *muttermumble*