I had an interesting discussion with someone and they bring up a good point about Fanfiction.net rule. Under the FanFiction Content Guidelines, of “Entries not allowed," item #5 says:
Any form of interactive entry: choose your adventure, second person/you based, Q&As, and etc.
The question they bought up to me is what qualifies as “interactive” in the context of being firmly prohibited? The rule doesn’t specifically state that they ban ALL second person stories just because of it’s format. Only that “interactive” entries are not allowed.
At first I was confused on what they were trying to tell me, but they explain to me that it’s possible that many people may have been misinterpreting this rule. Second point of view is an legit writing format and to ban it is ridiculous to do because they might as well ban first person too. First person in a way is also interactive, pulling the readers inside the main character’s mind and body.
So when you think of it, any story can be “interactive” and segregating a point of view just because it’s commonly abused is unfair. The rule doesn’t state that “interactive” is about the format of a story it is written in. Instead it refers to stories that are “interactive” which is when authors ask input from their readers of what should happen next and/or giving the readers choices in the story such as CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure).
I now understand what they are getting at. The rule is a bit of a grey area because it’s not clear and does not explain what the site doesn’t accept, but at the same time it offers a loophole because of the lack of information.
It’s possible that many people are misinterpreting the rule believing that anything written in second point of view is not allowed. Maybe they do ban second point of view, but not for the reason we’re thinking of? Or it’s possible that whoever thought of the rule doesn’t actually understand the concept of reader-insert at all and thought of it as an “interactive” story like CYOA?
We might never know the answer. People in the past have contacted those at Fanfiction.net to explain the rule but they’ve never respond. I personally don’t post any reader-insert stories because I always thought of it as against the rules and I continue to think so. Though it makes me wonder why there’s still so many second point of view stories on the site. I’ve seen some that have been there for years and even after purges they’re still around.
I’ve even seen some stories in which someone claimed to have reported them for being written in second point of view, but were never deleted by the moderators. So there must be a reason they were still allowed to stay. That’s why I think the person who bought this topic to my attention has a point. Maybe reader-inserts are allowed as long as they are not actually interactive? I don’t know, either way there has to be a reason that certain Reader-inserts stories are acceptable.
UPDATE – They finally give an explanation for the ban. I was correct. It’s not the format of the stories that they have a problem with. It’s when second point of view stories contains sexual content that they have issues with. Because if a minor reads it and their parents find the story it can result in a lawsuit for the site and the author who wrote it.
The writer becomes guilty of writing child porn and gets the label of sex offender for life, which is the main reason why they made the rule about Reader-inserts. If the story contains mature content (in particular sex) in them then they are instantly removed from the site. However, some Reader-insert stories are allowed to stay as long as they don’t contain any of that or if it does it must be done in a subtle or implied way (like a fade to black screen, but done in written form).
The second reason for the ban which mostly applies towards CYOA is when it’s interactive with reviewers. What that means is when reviewers tell the writer what they want in the story – such as using their reviews to share their own OCs to be added into the story, picking what pairing they want or voting/picking what happens next in the story and so on. Basically having the reviewers write the author’s own story is frown upon. But the real reason is because the review section wasn’t created to be used in such a way. Reviews are suppose to give an assessment of what the reader thought of the story or the chapter so far.
In short, as long as those type of stories don’t include sexual content or is interactive (like CYOA) with their reviewers than there is no reason to report them. That’s why some of those stories are still around, because they don’t violate the true reason those kind of stories were banned in the first place.
 DamnBlackHeart · Sun Jul 14, 2013 @ 02:17pm · 0 Comments |
