Expectations in mature fics. · 4:21pm Jan 29th, 2015
Two folks recently brought up an interesting idea to me that I'm admittedly not really aware of that got me wondering.
So I understand the concept that if you tag a fic Slice of Life, people will be understandably a bit miffed if it's nothing but action (There might also be a question for the mods in there but that's assuming a specific set of circumstances).
The same plausibly goes for mature stories, either gore or sex.
Now I've read a fair share of mature stuff. Usually sex because I don't like gore. I'll freely admit I've read more teen or everyone stuff than mature, but I don't shy away from it. There are some amazing mature stories I've read that are mature because of subject matter rather than because of violence or sex. I state this because I'm not that knowledgeable, so this idea might be a common thing I've just not come across before. I also don't tend to read comments too exhaustively so I again wouldn't see this sort of thing cropping up.
Specifically, the discussion was the idea of whether something should be tagged as mature, when the subject matter definitely strays into mature territory but doesn't have explicit sex or gore. And if this could possibly garner you downvotes and complaints for "misleading" the readers somehow.
The first mention was a blog post about the author's fic that dealt with a strong mature subject (To do with testing emotional bonds) and had some slightly gory scenes. The author felt that due to the subject matter it deserved the mature tag, but mused on getting downvotes as a result of people expecting mature to mean either explicit gore or explicit sex.
The second one I saw was dealing with a very touchy sexual subject (Consensual Foalcon*) And the author explained they had not planned to add any explicit sex scenes, but feared downvotes from people coming into a story tagged mature sex and not finding any outright sex scenes.
Now, I can appreciate the authors being concerned about this, but my curiousity is whether this is a common enough thing that it's a serious thing. I mean, I guess if you're wanting to read something that'll turn you on, and finding a fic that doesn't do that would be frustrating. But neither of the stories in question made any secret of the fact the purpose was to explore a mature subject without overly sexual or gory content.
What have you guys experienced? Is this just silly people not reading the description and then getting upset or do they have a valid point?
* That to me is impossible, but that's not something for this blog.
I think as long as it's clearly stated in the description of the story, there should not be any issues.
I've left my "view mature" filter set to OFF since day 1 on this site.
While I'm sure there are plenty of genuinely grownup stories with the "mature" tag, there are plenty of them without it as well.
I guess it all depends on the kind of shit you feel comfortable shoveling while looking for the diamonds.
I think it's reasonable to downvote for misleading expectations. For example, if someone writes a [Romance] fic and tags it as a [Comedy] instead (assuming no cross-tagging), that's a decent-sized expectation violation. I doubt it'd make me downvote, but I can see people getting unhappy. Hollywood does this on occasion with movies they don't know how to market—pitching them as something very different from what they are, in the hope that they can draw a larger audience—and it can be pretty frustrating.
It almost makes me wish we had a [Serious] tag, just to help set expectations. I can definitely imagine people seeing |Mature| and <Sex>, and expecting clop. I don't know how often it happens, since story descriptions are probably going to frame expectations pretty well, but I can imagine it. The level on which it's hard to wrap my head around this, though, is that most of the clop I've seen is pretty poorly written, and it's hard for me to understand people downvoting better stories regardless of content. It probably happens, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If you go in expecting clop and get a good story instead, yeah, you didn't get what you paid for—but you got something better. I guess if someone is really... let's say "worked up", shall we... If someone is really worked up, maybe they'll be upset they didn't get what they wanted. But... I don't know, I guess I don't understand how folks can care more about salaciousness than quality.
This, of course, presupposes that serious stories are going to be better stories. If we're talking serious mature versus clop mature on a level playing field, it's a bit easier for me to understand expectation violation downvoting.
ETA: No discussion of <Gore> because my reaction to it usually goes something like this:
i.imgur.com/MHuW96t.gif
I've been through this several times, and even I don't know. The thing is that by the time you've got a [Mature] tag, especially with a [Sex] tag, you're probably getting downvotes for a half dozen reasons that don't involve the story. If there's shipping, you getting downvoted for that. If it's [Dark] or covers any sort of controversial subject, you'll get them for that. Some people go down the row and downvote all the [Sex] tag, clop or no.
As long as you're clear in the description what kind of story it is, anyone who feels cheated deserves to feel cheated, in my opinion, and has no right to downvote based on that. But, if they do, you'll never be able to tell it from all the other downvotes that happen for stupid reasons. At that point you just go by the comments to see what people really think.
The other option, which I think is fair, is to leave off the [sex] tag if there's no graphic sex. Talking about sex, or sexual situations, should be acceptable in [Mature] fics without a [Sex] tag. But if you have graphic and non-clop sex (a serious rape, or an exploration of an awkward encounter) you're kind of stuck.
(Disclaimer: I just woke up from a nap, and might have talked my way in a circle around what you're asking. I'm sorry if it wasn't useful.)
Personally I'd rather have separate tags for outright porn and gorn as opposed to merely adult-oriented content. Like the difference between being rated R and rated NC-17.
But even that would only be a partial answer.
I noticed an uptick in favourites when I flipped one of my fics to Mature (cause it got a bit steamier than teen could justify), and a second round of them when I eventually had to add the sex tag. They weren't accompanied by much increase in the chapter read counts though, or votes, and to be honest that was my main concern with the whole affair - people were favouriting - or shelving now, I guess - but not actually reading as far as I could tell. They weren't expressing any opinion on it whatsoever.
I mean, if it's just talked or mentioned in the story but never explicitly written, then I don't really think it needs the mature tag. Unless I can visualize it in my mind with story descriptions, I'm okay with just a teen rating.
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Even when tired, you're still a delight to hear from. I confess, I do find it slightly baffling to see folks do stuff like that. Just seems a bit pointless really. But then again, I already try to comment as often as I can and thus far and claim I always leave a comment when I downvote a fic. Though I rarely downvote and am more likely to leave no thumb and a comment explaining.
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In my case I was too baffled by the chapter events to even be phased by the clop.
I do find it interesting to think that some folks are earmarking it for later, just because of a sex tag.
Mature stories are a bit tricky, in that their audience seems to include a fair number of people who tend to feel the |Mature| tag simply automatically means clop. It happens with gore too, but not as much, I think. Of course, it's probably true that any story tag has people who look for that one tag, and have assumptions regarding it without even bothering to check the rest of the tags first, but from what I have seen, the |Mature| tag seems to have this the worst. It doesn't help that this has contributed to a bit of stigma surrounding the tag to boot. I have seen a couple authors agonize over whether or not to add a |Mature| tag to something borderline, as they were afraid it would send their story to downvote hell, first from cloppers disappointed in the lack of horsesex, then from non-cloppers crusading against keeping |Mature| stories out of the feature box, because they think it's all clop.