It's curated. Every story is checked by a mod before being posted. Personally, I don't like this: I would rather authors had freedom to post anything they wanted, and run the "risk" of offending people or exposing people to things they didn't want to see every now and then. Hell, in my book, that's a feature, not a bug.
But should't the story automatically fit into "Mature" if it's labeled Dark or Tragedy?
AAUGH! No!
"Mature" is supposed to mean explicit sex or violence. This is funny when you think about it. Amit (a clever fellow) wrote a postmodernist meta-textual story and said it was "mature", to make the point that "mature" should mean something like "a story intended for mature people" rather than "a story intended for fifteen-year-old boys". On the other end of the scale, my own story "Twilight Sparkle and the Quest for Anatomical Accuracy", easily the most immature story I've ever written, was re-rated by a mod as "Mature".
"Dark" is any story that suggests that the world is not inherently friendly to you. "Black Robe" is dark, not because it has sex and violence, but because the priest tries so hard to do the moral thing and causes destruction to those who listen. There is a Russian short story called "How does it feel to be free?" that is very dark, that is just about a man released from years of being unjustly imprisoned, who finds he wants nothing but to go back to prison because he can't handle freedom anymore. "The Trial" by Kafka is dark. My "Game of Immortals" is dark comedy. If we admit any story that claims the universe is dispassionate, then all of Eliezer's writings are dark. Someday, when humanity is wiser and stories do not by default assume that the universe is friendly, the category "dark" may shrink to mean only those stories claiming the universe is malevolent, such as the writings of Lovecraft.
"Tragedy" is a story in which some character... aw, heck, just google it. It doesn't require sex or violence except when ancient Greeks do it.
To my mind, honestly Teen rated fic for a show rated "TV-Y" (ages 2 and older) is enough of a stretch. For characters of such show to suddenly take keen interest in intimate relationships, violence or whatnot (without a hint at it in the show) just doesn't look appropriate. I'm worried by the (greater than 0) amount of sex in some of the stories labeled Teen, too.
Fandom is largely about the extrapolation of characters in the show into more complete worlds.
Fandom is largely about the extrapolation of characters in the show into more complete worlds.
I think we can agree on that. It's just that extrapolating into some of the worlds troubles me.
As far as I can understand, curation and rating systems should exist to give reader the freedom to read what they want to read (and avoid what they want to avoid), not take away any freedom. I would prefer they include everything, just label it appropriately; and that's what curation should be good for: to make sure everything is labelled consistently whether or not e...
For the past two months, I've been writing, and posting, roughly two thousand words a day of "Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me", a story set in a "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" fanfic universe, "Chess Game of the Gods". Outside of the sheer NaNoWriMo-like exercise of pushing out near-daily chapters, I've also been trying to keep in mind the various principles I've learned from Yudkowsky and LessWrong, and to try to present them in a way that people who like reading MLP fanfics might be able to appreciate.
I've just come to something of a minor climax with chapter 60, and while I'll definitely be continuing the story, this seems like a good time to mention it here, for whatever feedback and constructive criticism anyone cares to offer.