Writing With a T Rating About Topics That Could Have Received an M Rating (Broadening Your Audience) · 1:01am Aug 7th, 2023
Blog Post's Rating: T for Teen
In the official fimfiction.net discord, I saw an interesting question in #site-dev-and-help.
"Recon" asked:
If I have a long story (over 100k words) that is rated T and I have a small portion late in the story where some very M rated events take place, what's the best way to handle that?
Would I just publish the chapter with the M content as a separate story and then maybe write a sanitized version of that chapter glossing over the details for the T story?
I think this is important!
An M rated story that isn't porn tends to get seen by fewer people, and often gets dislikes đź‘Ž for not being porn.
Whether your non-porn story is fluffy fun, or a deep story of substance, or even some of both, it's probably to your advantage to keep it T rated.
But how to do that?
This is a great place to play with the rule 'show, don't tell,' and some of the different ways you can interpret that rule.
SockPuppet's story "Redheart's War" provides one of my favorite horsewords examples of indirectly showing something to help keep things T rated.
In "Redheart's War," Celestia's military fights a war against pirates who abduct ponies into slavery, sometimes sexual slavery. A writer with no delicacy might have included a sex scene to vivdly 'show' this, but this T rated story handles it differently.
In this story, the mare Redheart tells us about her time in the Equestrian military as a combat medic.
Let me show you part of chapter 4...
"Where were you?" Lieutenant Armor demanded. "I said medic up!"
"Unconscious."
"Oh," he replied. He tilted his head and looked at the blood dripping off my face and the urine off my thighs. "You all right?"
I looked at the bodies and prisoners. What had happened in the minutes I was down?
"Celestia's Own don't quit," I replied.
"Redheart!" Sergeant Flash called from a few dozen feet away, where he was almost lost in the thickening smoke. "We've got slaves."
Celestia, forgive me for earlier having wished we would find somecreature to rescue.
I wiped ashes from my eyes and coughed.
Blinking away tears and smoke, I studied the situation. A large cell made of wrought iron bars sat against the starboard side. Two unicorn fillies and a hippogriff filly huddled opposite the door.
Lieutenant Armor leaned in close to me and whispered into my right ear.
He disappeared when he leaned in close.
"Oh no!" I gasped.
"Are you paying attention, Redheart?"
I waved my right hoof in front of my right eye.
"Sir, I, I just realized—my right eye is blind."
His magic gently grabbed my head and tilted it this way and that.
"You look fine," he said. "Dent on your helmet."
"Detached retina," I gasped, knowing I was correct. "Celestia!"
"Focus, soldier," Sergeant Flash said to me, his voice gentle. "These three fillies won't let a stallion into their cage. I've got a theory on that, if you follow me?"
I sucked in a deep breath and flicked my ears. I thought I had hated these slavers before, but my stomach absolutely roiled right then with renewed fury. "Yeah. Yeah, I get you."
"See if you can get them to go with you. This ship won't last long."
"Can do!" I replied. I was a trooper of Celestia's Own, wasn't I? Celestia's Own don't quit. I could do anything.
It said so right on our shoulder flashes: PERSEVERE.
It would take more than a concussion and a blind eye to stop me.
...Right?
Two hippogriff sailors came up a stairwell from the deck below, screaming: "Fire! Fire! Everygriff out, everypony go!"
Yeah, fire. Fire might interrupt Celestia's Own.
Flash pointed at Jade and the others. "Take the prisoners and wounded and get out."
I bucked the locked door open and stepped into the cage.
The fillies scooted backwards, away from me, into the opposite corner, screaming and blubbering. I took off my helmet and tossed it outside the cage.
The dent in my helmet was huge. I rubbed the back of my head, and warm wetness soaked onto the fetlock.
"Fillies, I'm Redheart. I'm a medic." I pointed to the red cross I had painted on the shoulder of my armor. "Let me help you."
The two unicorns just sobbed, curled into pitiful balls on the deck. The hippogriff took a step forward and flared her wings in challenge, protecting the others. She looked to be the oldest, maybe ten or eleven.
Flames were creeping toward us, and a piece of wood fell from the ceiling, hitting my thigh just below the armor, leaving a burn. I flicked ash from my ears.
"Let me help you," I said, sitting down on my haunches, and holding my forehooves out. "I'm a mare. I can guess why you were here."
The hippogriff nodded. Ash swirled around her. My butt was getting warm, the fire a deck below us intensifying.
"Redheart!" Lieutenant Armor said. "Smartly, now. The fire will reach the powder magazine. Thirty seconds, then I levitate them."
"No!" shouted one of the unicorn fillies. "No, no, no!"
I turned to him. "Go then! Get out, I've got this."
"Not without those three."
I glanced around. Other than dead bodies, Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor were the only two still below decks with me and the three slaves. The rest were gone.
"This ship is on fire," I said to the fillies. "We have to get you to our ship."
The hippogriff filly looked at Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor. Her tail tucked, covering her underside. She whimpered. "But... but stallions!"
"We're Celestia's Own," I said. "We're soldiers, not pirates. I promise, nopony will hurt you."
The hippogriff shook her head no.
"Mr. Flash here, and Mr. Armor," I said. "They're good stallions. I've known them for months."
She shook her head, tears leaving furrows in the ash on her snout.
"Please, we have to go," I said. "I trust them. Please trust me."
"No. No. No!" The filly stomped.
Ashes swirled thickly now, and I rubbed them out of my eyes. My right eye might have been blind, but it could still feel pain. Ash burned my flanks, chest, and ears. Anywhere the armor didn't cover.
"We're Celestia's Own," I said. "Celestia hoof-picked these stallions, she hoof-picked every one of us."
I turned and showed her my other shoulder, the one etched with our unit flash, with Celestia's cutie mark. "See? Celestia herself. We're her personal guard. Celestia sent us to save you. Can't you trust Celestia?"
The two unicorns looked up and nodded. The hippogriff looked at one, then at the other, and then nodded to me. "Celestia?"
"She sent us for you," I said. "Honey, please. We have to go."
She took two steps, and jumped up to hug me. The unicorn fillies joined the hug. They trembled, and I could feel their ribs. I lifted the three fillies onto my back. Half-starved, they weighed almost nothing.
Flash hovered a few feet off the deck and flapped, pegasus magic blowing a clear pathway in the smoke for us, his wounded leg hanging down and dripping blood, the bandage soaked through. The lieutenant lit his horn, making just enough light for us to find a stairway up.
Burns and smoldering ash covered all six of us. The hippogriff filly's feathery tail smoked. We all coughed and choked. At the top of the stairway, we broke out into the sunlight on the deck. Lieutenant Armor was the last one out.
We six were the last to board the Following Seas. It cut loose from the pirate schooner, which was still tied to the Ocean Swell. Both ships were now fully engulfed in flames. Following Seas made sail and ran from the burning wrecks.
The Ocean Swell sank, burning as it slid under, the ocean sizzling against it. The Equestrian and Hippogriff flags still flew proudly from the mast as it went down.
The pirate schooner blew up, flaming hunks of wood arcing high. The blast shook us and we all covered our ears.
Nineteen Hippogriff Navy and twenty-one Royal Guard bodies went down with the two ships.
The hippogriffs who weren't busy with the rigging or the wounded knelt around the body of Crown Prince Guidestar, sobbing and holding each other.
I whispered to a hippogriff, "Does your queen have another heir?"
He wiped tears from his eyes. "Her Highness, Princess Skystar. But she's just a chick, not even walking."
A hippogriff mare poured buckets of clean water over the fillies, washing away the ash and cooling their burns. I stripped my armor, then she poured a few buckets of water over me.
As the cold water sluiced over my rising blisters, washing away the ashes, sweat, blood, and urine, I stood there for a moment, my shakes starting. That was different from the scrap in the desert, where it had been hours before I got the shakes. This time, at least, I didn't vomit. Small favors.
I checked over the three freed slaves. The fillies had no broken bones, but lots of infected cuts and abrasions and the fresh burns. Plus the injuries they had received from their "duties" aboard the ship, of course.
I cleaned, salved, and bandaged their cuts and burns. After I hit the three fillies with painkillers, they passed out. Tender Jade then cleaned the back of my head and stitched the laceration where my helmet had split my scalp, and he bandaged my burns.
"Boss," Jade said, "Those are second-degree burns you've got. Let me sedate you."
"No."
"But—"
"Those three fillies trust me," I replied. "If one of them wakes up, I need to be awake for her."
"Boss, you've got to be in pain." He pointed to the bandages covering my ears and lower legs.
"I have a concussion," I told Jade. "Keep me awake. No sedation."
"That's an old mare's—"
"Do as I say."
"At least take a painkiller, if you won't let me put you under."
"Fine." I took the pill he offered, but it made damn little difference.
Over that first hour, blisters rose across every part of my body my armor hadn't covered.
Sock never TELLS us 'These fillies were raped,' and never TELLS us how badly it hurt them. Sock never even tells us that these fillies either weren't given enough to eat, or felt that even eating was hopeless. Instead, Sock SHOWS us EVIDENCE that we can put together ourselves to fill in a lot of their backstory, to an extent that each reader can handle.
The story stays T rated, but it covers M rated material in a way that emphasizes the material's horror without ever writing the M rated scene.
Sock uses similar techniques in Sock's "Honor Harrington" Crossover-tagged fics.
Tasteful T rated stories aren't the only thing Sockpuppet writes. Sock is notorious in some circles for writing stories that aim at different goals, whether they're M rated porn, or different kinds of T rated comic horror, spawning a "SockNo!" meme.
Nonetheless, I'm glad Sock has written such fine examples as I give above, and that these stories have been so popular on fimfiction.net.
That is actually quite masterfully done.
Exceptional as always Birb. And thank you Sockpuppet, for writing excellent difficult subjects.
Honestly really good advice. I'd also have to add that writing mature topics does tend to require a certain amount of care which far too often don't get enough time to be addressed properly. Especially when it comes to something like sexual assault, which can be an extremely sensitive topic, and one that's often handled quite poorly.
If you're not devoting the appropriate amount of effort to addressing a topic and just using it for shock or straw-manning in an otherwise serious setting then it probably is out of place. You need to ask yourself what you're trying to express and if more graphic depictions will support your work or just come across as distasteful.
As an experiment, it would be interesting to test this on some of the more graphic content I've written.
I don't write gratuitous violence, but I don't sugar coat it either. The goal is to put an accurate picture of the situation in the reader's mind. Not to shock them, but to assist them in seeing the severity of the situation.
Thanks for the plug. I was rather proud of that scene in Redheart.
Next blog topic: comedy stories that revel in their M-ratedness and don't try to avoid it.
Indeed. Excellent advice and excellent stories you brought forward.