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A Question of Maturity: New Upload Policy Question
11 months ago
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So, am I the only one who thinks the moderators and FA's new admins/owners are taking things too far with the minors and mature content section of the upload policy change? I understand that extreme adult content and writing graphic sexual scenes involving minors or depicting such is highly inappropriate, to say the least. But to remove minors completely from mature works seems too drastic a step to take as well to me. You want to keep little kids out of it, I am 100% with you, though it could be argued that little kids are just as involved in mature material as any teenager or adult nowadays with how common cursing and swearing, among other things, are becoming in the household and at school.
But going back to my original point and focus, minors who are in high school and close to graduation. In other words, the ones in the range of 16-18, should be handled more loosely/delicately. Here's my reasoning why.
Let's take a high school setting, for example. There is everything that takes place in that kind of setting in the real world. Sex, drugs, violence, gang activity, and yes, even rape and sexual harassment. I'm not saying that we necessarily have to depict scenes involving such things in graphic detail, but describing physical attributes is an inherent and vitally important tool of any writer to also portray a character's personality. How much makeup do they put on? What body parts are they trying to emphasize? Is the focus on the chest/breasts, the glutes, the abs? Is the clothing conservative or revealing? Does this hint at insecurity, peer pressure, flaunting, or quiet courage? Is it the sum of their being or merely a fakeout/facade to be torn down in meaningful ways throughout the story? True, a story can be told without drawing attention to these aspects, but it will be lacking depending on where the end goal is and what kind of story is being written.
No matter how I look at it, there is no way to prevent descriptions of those who are "well endowed" because in a high school setting, the culture, more often than not, is designed to make people want to show those attributes off, to flex it as a symbol of social status and power. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I was derided for my high voice when I was younger, being asked when my "balls" were "finally going to drop." I was also asked to point out a woman I believed to be sexually attractive in a large magazine portraying women in all manner of garments, though the majority of them were on the more revealing side. They had the book opened to such a section. I looked for the more conservative designs and explained that was the kind of person I would prefer to date. Needless to say, this did not earn me much social points with the upperclassmen I sat with at lunch. Though in fairness, I did seem to get appreciation from the girls who sat there, so it wasn't all bad.
Being attractive in school often leads to popularity, and is used as a shield as well as a template against being labeled as the weird or the outcast. Immature rowdy boys will joke about their manhood. Girls will gossip about who has the best looks, the most attractive attributes physically and emotionally, and how some maintain their popularity or power in the hierarchy while others are held back.
And the others? The others either find cliques, make their own, or struggle to stay afloat in the storm-churned waters that are adolescence in public school.
Am I listing stereotypes? Yes. But that is because, sadly, much of high school culture has become a living stereotype. I was extremely uncomfortable with certain traditions in my school among classmates because they involved the use of crude language as part of psyching up for the school musical. I repeated the words where I felt I could, but when the cursing came around, I remained quiet. The experience of the musical itself was fun. It's just that incidents like that didn't really work/fit for me. I understood the spirit, but you see my point about there being stereotypes invoked or used for the purposes of psyching up or satisfying personal vendettas or urges.
And like it or not, a big aspect of high school is most definitely going to be the libido because it is literally a sea of hormones with puberty at its height of power. Boys are going to find girls attractive, and girls are going to find guys attractive. And, yes, some of them may or may not be LGBTQ+. I am not going down that rabbit hole of pronouns and gender identity right now. The point remains that those attributes are a must because they are a central part of any character being written in that setting, and they are essential to helping draw and realize the fullness of the characters in a story.
Should it be taken to extremes? In my opinion, most certainly not. There are limits. But these aspects can be listed and utilized without turning it into graphic pornographic sexualization with masturbation or M/M or M/F or orgies or any of that stuff. Sexualization is a natural part of the high school experience because the sexual organs are revving up to their full throttle. I don't mean to say that one should actively portray someone as being a "slut" or a "whore" or whatever other term might come to mind in the active sense of the word. But there are individuals portrayed in fiction and in real life who really are like that. And who can be introduced in a story to add meaningful development.
So, long of the short, IMO, teenagers nearing adulthood should be allowed in mature stories, because high school is where a large part of the development of maturity takes place. The rest happens in college and the real world that follows. And the description of bulges in crotch or elsewhere should also be allowed for the same reason, because it fits and because it works. What is the line between overt sexualization for the sake of writing smut and the subtle direction that is for the sake of sincere character development toward a particular end? That is ultimately up to the moderators to decide.
But let me know, what's your take on this decision? Do you think FA's admins are cracking down too hard? And if so, why do you think so? Do you think it's so FA's staff can qualify the site for more advertising to try to get more money to run the site and the servers? Do you agree with the stance of no use of minors in any form of mature writing? Or do you think that, once again, the monitors, admins, and FA's new owner(s?) are going overboard?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
And thanks for reading.
~ Omni
But going back to my original point and focus, minors who are in high school and close to graduation. In other words, the ones in the range of 16-18, should be handled more loosely/delicately. Here's my reasoning why.
Let's take a high school setting, for example. There is everything that takes place in that kind of setting in the real world. Sex, drugs, violence, gang activity, and yes, even rape and sexual harassment. I'm not saying that we necessarily have to depict scenes involving such things in graphic detail, but describing physical attributes is an inherent and vitally important tool of any writer to also portray a character's personality. How much makeup do they put on? What body parts are they trying to emphasize? Is the focus on the chest/breasts, the glutes, the abs? Is the clothing conservative or revealing? Does this hint at insecurity, peer pressure, flaunting, or quiet courage? Is it the sum of their being or merely a fakeout/facade to be torn down in meaningful ways throughout the story? True, a story can be told without drawing attention to these aspects, but it will be lacking depending on where the end goal is and what kind of story is being written.
No matter how I look at it, there is no way to prevent descriptions of those who are "well endowed" because in a high school setting, the culture, more often than not, is designed to make people want to show those attributes off, to flex it as a symbol of social status and power. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I was derided for my high voice when I was younger, being asked when my "balls" were "finally going to drop." I was also asked to point out a woman I believed to be sexually attractive in a large magazine portraying women in all manner of garments, though the majority of them were on the more revealing side. They had the book opened to such a section. I looked for the more conservative designs and explained that was the kind of person I would prefer to date. Needless to say, this did not earn me much social points with the upperclassmen I sat with at lunch. Though in fairness, I did seem to get appreciation from the girls who sat there, so it wasn't all bad.
Being attractive in school often leads to popularity, and is used as a shield as well as a template against being labeled as the weird or the outcast. Immature rowdy boys will joke about their manhood. Girls will gossip about who has the best looks, the most attractive attributes physically and emotionally, and how some maintain their popularity or power in the hierarchy while others are held back.
And the others? The others either find cliques, make their own, or struggle to stay afloat in the storm-churned waters that are adolescence in public school.
Am I listing stereotypes? Yes. But that is because, sadly, much of high school culture has become a living stereotype. I was extremely uncomfortable with certain traditions in my school among classmates because they involved the use of crude language as part of psyching up for the school musical. I repeated the words where I felt I could, but when the cursing came around, I remained quiet. The experience of the musical itself was fun. It's just that incidents like that didn't really work/fit for me. I understood the spirit, but you see my point about there being stereotypes invoked or used for the purposes of psyching up or satisfying personal vendettas or urges.
And like it or not, a big aspect of high school is most definitely going to be the libido because it is literally a sea of hormones with puberty at its height of power. Boys are going to find girls attractive, and girls are going to find guys attractive. And, yes, some of them may or may not be LGBTQ+. I am not going down that rabbit hole of pronouns and gender identity right now. The point remains that those attributes are a must because they are a central part of any character being written in that setting, and they are essential to helping draw and realize the fullness of the characters in a story.
Should it be taken to extremes? In my opinion, most certainly not. There are limits. But these aspects can be listed and utilized without turning it into graphic pornographic sexualization with masturbation or M/M or M/F or orgies or any of that stuff. Sexualization is a natural part of the high school experience because the sexual organs are revving up to their full throttle. I don't mean to say that one should actively portray someone as being a "slut" or a "whore" or whatever other term might come to mind in the active sense of the word. But there are individuals portrayed in fiction and in real life who really are like that. And who can be introduced in a story to add meaningful development.
So, long of the short, IMO, teenagers nearing adulthood should be allowed in mature stories, because high school is where a large part of the development of maturity takes place. The rest happens in college and the real world that follows. And the description of bulges in crotch or elsewhere should also be allowed for the same reason, because it fits and because it works. What is the line between overt sexualization for the sake of writing smut and the subtle direction that is for the sake of sincere character development toward a particular end? That is ultimately up to the moderators to decide.
But let me know, what's your take on this decision? Do you think FA's admins are cracking down too hard? And if so, why do you think so? Do you think it's so FA's staff can qualify the site for more advertising to try to get more money to run the site and the servers? Do you agree with the stance of no use of minors in any form of mature writing? Or do you think that, once again, the monitors, admins, and FA's new owner(s?) are going overboard?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
And thanks for reading.
~ Omni
What i understand is that the mod/owners wand combat works with sexual activities with minors and most likely aimed to the babyfur and AR crowd.
For the TF the only issue is with "Body Part Emphasis" but i think if you say things he start growing a tail or "Scales start growing on his right hand and at the same time his nails are replace by claw's and turn his hand in to a draconic paw." or "I notest that my feed changes in to what look like werewolfs legs" are oke.
But i agree i think there need to be clear up by the mods/owner.