Animation Source Forums

So, I guess I have to take a decision in order to stop the debate which continue to expand.

My decision is that I will put a limit to what can be sent, but to some extent.
I will keep the warnings system, because PG fanfics will still be allowed.
And here are the fanfic rules which will be applied from now.

As a general rule :

The fanfics which rely on violence, contain gore parts or descriptive sexual parts are not allowed on the site.

Any fanfic that is acceptable for this rule, but would not be acceptable for an official Balto film, will be rated PG.


What is acceptable?

- Fights with no or little blood.
- Characters kissing
- Characters making love, but without details.
- Insults, when they are used for a good reason.
- Religious matters, if they don't relate to a specific / known religion.


What is NOT acceptable?

- Stories that have no relation with Balto. (wolves stories are accepted)
- Stories which contain only violence.
- Gory stuff (dissections, body parts cut, ...)
- Descriptive / indecent scenes of characters having sex.
- Fanfics ONLY based on disturbing matters : drug, sects, suicides,...
- Political matters.
- Characters swearing at others for no reason / profanity to a high level.
- Any text directly copied from something wrote by someone else, for which you didn't ask permission to use.

(this list is NOT exhaustive and is left to the appreciation of the mods)


The fanfics which are not acceptable will not be deleted, but deactivated. The mods will send a PM to the authors, telling them that they are invited to tone down parts of their fanfics to make them acceptable.
I will have to hire new fanfics mods, whose job will be specifically to read the fanfics sent, put the right rating and validate the content of the fanfics. I will also have to change the fanfics admin so that the mods can disable fanfics instead of deleting them.

Firstly, there are plenty of people who fuss and complain about how the news media spends too much time focusing on negative news (which, from THEIR point of view, sells). And as to the entertainment media, well, I think it's OBVIOUS that there are plenty of people who complain about the level of gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality of content.

Secondly, the television (cable or network) is not an exclusively "kid-friendly" medium. Balto Source IS (or at least it is CALLED that). And incidentally, "kid-friendly" doesn't mean that the membership is mostly (or all) kids. It means that kids should be able to come here and not be faced with controversial material. Hmmm...

Thirdly, there is a reason why cartoons such as South Park and Beavis & Butthead (which are ADULT cartoons), as well as many video games, have disclaimers on them now. Because kids IMMITATE what they see or read. There have been too many cases of kids, who have little understanding of the stupidity of imitating what they see in those media, have caused serious injury or death. There is the one famous case of a boy who, after watching an episode of Beavis & Butthead, where the two main characters burnt down something by starting a fire, imitated them, and burned down his own house. And killed his infant sister in the process.

And some of you wonder why there is an outcry against these controversial fan fictions being posted here...

Good work, Steet. An acceptable compromise. For me anyway. I am satisfied. Still, er...what about the profanity issue we discussed earlier?

It's written, not acceptable.
Of course, as I've said, it's still difficult to be really precise, but I think most people will see the degree of limit I've put here. And I hope the fanfics mods will understand it.

Also, even if these rules seems strict, I think that most (90%) of the fanfics on the site will stay acceptable, with a majority getting a PG rating though.
And I don't think that there are so many fanfics that couldn't be toned down a bit for making them acceptable.

Oops. Eh heh...I must have missed that.

Yeah, steet, as for people who are willing to edit their fics so that they can be viewable to the little children of the site, how the heck are they supposed to edit them to everyone's liking (including THEIR OWN) when they're banned?

The fanfic rules need to be strict,there's a lot of members here.

No one is banned forever...You're only banned for 4 days it seems. And besides, the mods will be able to deactivate fanfics if there's something urgent. (but I still need to make that modification on the fanfic admin)

I will be honest I am not best pleased with new rules.


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I can live with this, but fics I have read kinda of fall under the out list, and my own fall under it. With the swearing for no reason, I don't mind it, but in the real world and in 1925 swearing is secound hand and was pretty much every where and still is. Swearing is all around if you listen at a school or at the mall, you scored a ton of swearing. So I can take that, in every day life you hear swearing to the max. If you had a beep for every swear word you heard in daily life like school or going some where you only hear beeeeeeeeeeep. Political matters well everything falls under this really it does in every sense life is a political matter no matter how you put it. The gore thing well, I don't get why people are offended well with the new rules and thing pg-13 and ups are gone now. And by taking these things and make'in a disney site. Seems to be coming too. You can go ahead and call me an evil person, oh he likes gore and swearing and all that crap. I can take insults it doesn't bother me. PG site...



K follow the movie for fic and remake, and remake and remake...not best pleased. from what I pull Star wars doesn't even go on the site it's too voilent and theme is off so it is a gone. So the diseny rule, well not to the most true because POTC is high for a diseny and too high for the site. And it seems a diseny PG. Not the PG rule. Because from this Jaws is far too much for the site which is PG. K I got it Diseny.

Well...
I don't think I agree completely with the new rule.
I try to keep my stories realistic, and in that avenue, crappy stuff (losing an appendage in a battle, certain things like that) happen to people.
You know, for all this heated debate, I never got one bad post back from ANYONE about my story "Nightmare in Nome", which was a straight horror, gore fic based on Friday the 13th.
Now, if everyone is so "offended" by this matieral, why didn't someone bring it up then?
Anyone?

Also, a note to all the writers who feel that their stories need a sex scene, here's a few notes on that subject. *Note* if you are against this subject you may want to stop reading this post now*

In a story, you don't have to describe in detail every part of the process (specifically sex here) for instance (this is using humans as an example):

You want to set up a sex scene between your two characters (for the purpose of this discussion, they are a male and female)
You could write about her hair, the feelings the two have for each other, all kinds of things without actually describing his/her body or the actions of the two.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

"As John was drifting off to sleep, he heard his door open, and looked up to find Marie standing in the doorway. She shrugged off her robe and walked over to the side of his bed.
John's heart started beating a little faster as she crawled into bed beside him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
John stared into her eyes, those big teardrop eyes that were a pool of blue he always seemed to float away in.
"I love you John." Marie said softly.
John smiled and kissed her.
"I love you too." he responded.

Now, in that scene we understand very well what's going on, but I didn't describe either the man or woman's body, or any of the "explicit" actions of the scene. The reader is more than welcome to (and probably will) fill those in in their own minds, that's fine, that's the way we need to keep it on this site.
That is a "clean" sex scene.

As to the discussion of whether gay/bi/incest fics should be allowed?
Well, personally I've written an incest fic myself. (I DO NOT advocate that practice, but I was curious as to what would happen) That fic (A Forbidden Love) was the target of much praise, and again I never heard anything negative about it.
In short, I do not believe personally that gay/incest/bi relationships are right (morally) but if people want to write about them, that's fine with me.
Personally, I won't read the bi/gay fics as I find that detestable, let them write it. If I get to write what I want, so should they (keeping within the rules of course). Just because a subject is morally wrong to me doesn't mean someone else might find it acceptable and want to write about it.

In short, that's my veiw on things.
I have a few stories that fall under the "too violent" rule.
I hope this whole "violence" thing doesn't get out of hand, because I really like it here, I feel "at home" when I come to this site (...and I'm stationed overseas so that's important) but I write the way I write and I don't plan on changing it... ever.
Until I hear from MY READERS that my stories are "offensive" I shall continue to write them exactly as before.
Don't worry, I'm not leaving, (I REALLY don't want to do that) but I don't like the way this is heading...