I freely admit that I am a contrary.  Always have been, always shall be.  Be that as it may, I do have a good reason for not employing ratings on my fiction.

While I may be relatively new to writing fanfiction, I'm not new to reading it, nor to writing itself.  I've been writing a long time and the problem as I see it with the rating system is that it employs a labeling method which was created for a visual medium, not a written one.  Even if we are writing fiction based on movies and/or TV shows, we are still writing.  And in writing, the style, method, rhythm of language, and even the vocabulary chosen has more impact on how any given scene is received by a reader, than the 'what' being described.

Writers love language, or at least, we should.  I make my word choices with some deliberation.  If I put the word "cock" in a sentence, I've chosen it for sound, for connotation, even for the power of a pithy Anglo-Saxon obscenity.  It's not due to a lack of vocabulary.  There are too many other choices:  penis, phallus, dick, erection, pistol, rod, steely dan, or even the godawful 'straining manhood' which sounds more like a dog about to escape its owner than a part of male anatomy.  Or, er, hmmm.  Maybe that's a more accurate simile than I first thought . . . .  :-)   But more seriously, all of those terms have a connotation and a sound, not just a denotation.  That is, they carry a freight of imagery and association besides the literal definition.  The careful author employs them accordingly.  And the choices made -- the collective effects of all the choices -- (i.e., the linguistic tone of the narrative) will determine its final effect.  Frankly, allusive but poorly written prose can be more 'abusive' to the sensibilities than graphic poetry-prose.

Unfortunately, the rating system was created to denote what is shown, not how it's shown.  As such, it's offensive to the very nature of good writing because it's REDUCTIVE.  It throws aside considerations of quality and artistry in favor of mere content.  I doubt anyone would seriously compare something from Penthouse letters with N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer-winning House Made of Dawn.  Yet the rating system employed for fanfiction would require that both be labeled "NC-17."  Now call me a literary snob, but they no more belong in the same category than horseradish and honey.

And -- knowing the subculture of fanfic -- if someone were to slap "NC-17" on Momaday's novel, there are some readers who 1) would assume it was "adult fiction" which equals "mere smut" which equals BAD, and since bad isn't worth reading, they would never open it at all, or 2) would rush to open it because of the rating, discover that the sex scenes (however graphic) are a very small part of the larger tale and give up in frustration.  In both cases, readers have been misled, and the use of labels has become unhelpful and simplistic.  Much better to let the novel stand on the merits of Momaday's gorgeous feel for language which springs from his rich heritage of Kiowa traditional storytelling.

The problem, at least from where I'm sitting (and that's ultimately all I can speak for), is that fanfiction has been employing inappropriate and misleading categories.  Or at the very least, the subculture of fanfiction has created assumptions attached to certain ratings and labels which do not fit all writers.  They certainly don't fit me.  And that's why I don't use them.  Others may feel perfectly comfortable with them, and are welcome to use them.  I would hardly pretend to mandate from on high. :-)

But to me, it's far more indicative of what a reader will find in a story to employ categories familiar from publishing -- categories, after all, which were developed out of and for a written medium.  Therefore, if I say that my fiction is "adult literary mainstream," that means the subject matter of the fiction on this site could include anything you might find in the mainstream section of a bookstore from graphic descriptions of violence and sex to completely inoffensive vanilla humor.  But all of it will be aimed at an adult audience in terms of the themes, topics, ideas and even the vocabulary employed.  One writes fiction for children differently, in everything from the complexity of characterization and plot to the reading level of the narrative.  I would not, for instance, write "It was a very serendipidous encounter" in a book to be marketed for Young Readers.  Most of them wouldn't understand that sentence, even if there's nothing 'offensive' about it.  Adult fiction doesn't mean content.  It's much BIGGER than that.

I don't believe in gratuitous sex, gratuitous violence, or gratuitous anything.  If it's gratuitous, it doesn't need to be there -- it's deadwood, and should be cut.  I'm a deliberate writer, and I ask the reader to trust me -- as an artist -- to "do the right thing" (to cop a phrase).  I give fairly extensive notes and warnings on all my fiction, which is more than you'll find in most published work.

But what of the eternal concern about kids accidentally stumbling over adult fiction?  Let's be frank here.  Slapping NC-17 on a story is throwing a red cloak in front of a bull.  Certainly I recall sneaking into bookstores and libraries, trying to judge book covers as to whether a novel might have some juicy parts.  :-)   Simple adolescent psychology.  Yes, I know all about browser blocking devices and such (I have a young child myself).  And for some fiction sites, you want to use clear labels.  No question.  But sometimes the best protection is to be quiet.

As for my own fiction, if a kid is old enough to like and want to read it in the first place -- that is, old enough to handle the vocabulary and themes and ideas expressed  -- then they're probably old enough to handle the graphic parts.  If they aren't sure, then the warnings will give them a good clue (and they're probably mature enough to pay attention to the warnings).  But really, any kid who isn't emotionally ready to handle the sex scenes which are embedded in some of my stories will not get that far in the first place.  They'll be bored to tears first and quit reading.  And frankly, if it were my teen, I'd rather he read the sex scenes in "Body Memory" or "101 (and not Dalmatians)" which depicts a healthy physical expression between committed adults than see people blow each other away with guns in some of the movies the MPA rates PG-13.  Maybe I'm warped.

In any case, and to return to the issue of publishing labels (rather than MPA labels), the word "literary" tells the general style of the mainstream I write.  It tells the sort of vocabulary employed, a bit about the pacing, and even the probable themes explored in my work.  It's a clue to the reader that I'm a novelist, and as such, I'll probably be concerned with issues about "the human condition."  I'm not writing 'romps' or 'a ripping good yarn' (to borrow a popular book blurb).  I have nothing against them, like to read them, but I'm lousy at writing them.  Even when I write action adventure (like Climb the Wind), it's ultimately about people and the impact of events on human lives.  Climb the Wind is not about angst, or rape, or grief, or conspiracies.  It's about the wounds left in a soul when hope dies.  It's about the descent of the hero, and his redemption:  the classic heroic cycle of mythic literature way back to Gilgamesh.  These things extend beyond the common labels of fanfic, but I think they are -- ultimately -- more fair to the art of writing.

Or maybe I'm just blowing it out my ear.   :-)