Concerning WHHD: The dark side of things

Yay, my first blog post!

Anyway, what I am here to talk about is the question of age rating for my story, What Heavens Have Divided. Who reads my story; you probably noticed by now that it has been getting progressively darker and darker. Now, I know that a lot of people simply dislike anything rated mature or has the "gore" tag, which is fine and I understand where you come from.

And now the dreaded word...
However! (You totally expected "But!", didn't you?)
I really like writing things in their natural light, that is, write them as if it was real. That means that I would inevitably have to dip into the dark tag, sometimes way deeper than the "teen" content rating would allow me. Which means that I have to restrain myself sometimes so that I wouldn't have to rate my story mature. That, however, often means that I have to edit out things that I felt would be... appropriate or just plain "real" in certain situations.

You might ask, why don't I simply change the rating to "mature" and be done with it? Well, the answer is quite simple. Not all people are into the realism that I'd like to present in my stories (yes, there will be more than one... I hope), especially concerning what world the fanfics take place in. And I also don't want to "taint" a story that works great without all the really dark stuff just as well. And, I am selfish and don't want to lose readers.

So, that's why I am creating a side-story that's practically the same thing, except that it has uncut scenes and such. You can find it here: WHHD: Eye Of The Beholder
Right now, there's not much there but there will be more to come in the future. Also, at the beginning of each chapter that had to be stripped of the dark stuff, I'll post a link to the mature version.

For those who want to read a more human-friendly version, carry on as if this blog post had never happened. You won't miss much (only some important character development)