[HPforGrownups] FF.net Ratings

[Denise]

No: HPFGUIDX 947

Lori,
are you happy with the Rating you gave your work?  Not if any/everyone else is; are you?  If you feel the subject matter is not up to an eleven years' reading, then yes, you are within your rights to make it R rated.  My own novel has some of your fade-out type scenes, where they are throwing nightgowns, etc. around and getting into bed.  If I put this on the web, I would rate it R (Also for the horror-aspect and the violence, such as that of the Haunting of Hill house horror).  It is an author's view of what her audience should be.  Jo wrote the book(s) for herself, not for children, not for adults (as an audience).  If that's how she wrote them, then we as an audience should not complain when the dark tones move away from the cutesy children ones and onto more adult ones--they are still being wrote (written?) for her!  She makes the call.  (I pray that for Book 5, this is still the fact and not the publishers!)

You make the call as well.  I feel that some of the issues you bring up the pre-teen age (11, etc.. until at least 15-16) might not be ready to face.  It's a personal view, though, as a parent.  Other parents, if they think differently can do exactly as you say--assist their children in obtaining copies/joining the egroup, etc.... Don't change your values just because someone else questions them.  Stand firm for what you believe is right.

Dee    

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: summers.65 at osu.edu 
  To: hpforgrownups at egroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 11:54 PM
  Subject: [HPforGrownups] FF.net Ratings



       
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  The mention of ratings on ff.net brings up something I've been thinking
  about lately, to wit, how one should rate one's work.

  When I began posting Paradigm of Uncertainty, I rated it R.  It's still
  rated R.  The content doesn't really justify this rating.  There's no
  explicit sex (I usually cut away, though there has been a bit of feeling-up
  recently), no horrible swearing, and the violence isn't very graphic except
  perhaps when various people get stabbed.  I didn't rate it R because I
  thought it contained objectionable content, I rated it R to communicate
  that the story was intended for grownups to read and wasn't really suitable
  for 11-year-olds, to whom PG-13 is fair game.

  I'm wondering if I should change the rating to PG-13.  I've gotten a few
  mildly irate emails from teenagers who think I'm saying they can't handle
  this subject material.  Not really the point.

  I recently had a bit of a heated email exchange with a young woman who
  wanted to join my mailing list, but couldn't because the parental controls
  locked her out (the list is indicated to be for grownups).  She wanted me
  to subscribe her myself, I refused.  I told her that if her parents didn't
  want her reading stuff for adults then it wasn't my place to contradict
  them.  While I doubt that anything on the list or in the story would give
  them problems, that's not my decision to make.  As an author and a list
  administrator, I think it's better to err on the side of caution and rate
  the story perhaps more severely than it merits on its face.

  Any thoughts on this rating system and its implications?
  Lori


  **********************************************************
  Lori   "Scrambled Eggs Super"  Summers

          Reality is for people who can't face drugs.

  Last movie seen:  "X-Men" (most excellent)
  Reigning car-CD:  "This Time Around"  Hanson (shaddap, you)
  Current book: "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
  ***********************************************************



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