Well, they've just put a new note up on the homepage...

[dragonbat2006.livejournal.com]

June 4th 2012 -- Notices: •Please note we would like to clarify the content policy we have in place since 2002. FanFiction.Net follows the Fiction Rating system ranging from Fiction K to Fiction M. Although Fiction Ratings goes up to Fiction MA, FanFiction.Net since 2002 has not allowed Fiction MA rated content which can contain adult/explicit content on the site. FanFiction.Net only accepts content in the Fiction K through Fiction M range. Fiction M can contain adult language, themes and suggestions. Detailed descriptions of physical interaction of sexual or violent nature is considered Fiction MA and has not been allowed on the site since 2002.


No word about summaries needing to be rated K, though...


ETA: Yes, I see it in the general rules that you need to consent to before posting a story, but they haven't mentioned it in their latest heads-up.

Comments

[evalentine99.livejournal.com]

Its more than vauge it's useless. As a person very familier with the ratings system on TV and film. I have struggled with the diffrence between M and MA. What does explict mean? They need to give examples.

Some fandoms like Torchwood are adult. Torchwood was shown after 9pm and was considered an adults only show. So many of the fics produced have very adult themes. Does M = no slash which goes against the entire history of fanfiction since the 1960's where the term came from Spock/Kirk and so on. I can't write het fic. I loathe it. I am interested in exploring male sexuality. I can't write rainbows and happy skipping bunnies who do nothing but smile sining in lalala as htey head off into the sunset.

So eveyrthing I write I automatically lable M becuase i know that the themes are darker.

Using their rating system Harry Potter would be MA it is extremly violent explicitly so. So using that example and as I write mainly angst driven romances I figured that M meant everything except the strange and wierd. Blood play B&D.

They need to be much clearer considering the cultural diversity of the writers which span every country on this earth.

[dannylionthe1st.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And also experiences. What you may think is rated G, T, M, etc. someone will probably have a different view of that. Your G could be T for me. When I was younger I thought all of my stories should be rated M, because I figured better be safe than sorry. That and I had thought that later on I would write not a super explicit sex scene, but something tamer than what you see in Game of Thrones and TV shows like that. And I also thought some of the stuff that happened to my characters was better for Mature people to read. After rereading my old stories I came to realize that it wasn't the case. My stories are pretty tame and fit more along the lines of T. But that's what I think now.

The whole "violent nature" part baffles me. In one of my fics I went a little descriptive on how a character's sister was killed. But I did that to try to show the horror because she saw her sister get killed. It's one of those images that will be forever engraved into her brain. That story is rated M, really just for that scene alone which happens later. I even toned it down from the original. Would they think that MA or M?

Oh FFN. Stop with the useless vague crap.