Open Novella Journal 2024

Round 2

I'll start by noting all of my stories managed to make it through to the third round, the negative side being more work for me the next few weeks. And, for this round, they're not in alphabetical order, so that means the order I should focus on them should be the order they're listed in, thus prioritizing finishing the ones listed first and the others last. The order is: Cinders and Magic, Free Falling II - Seconds Away, Scars and Ashes,  Throne of Ashes, Buried Within II, Buried Without, The Hobgoblins, Gemini' Summer Getaway, The Four Interchanging Lives of Regulus Black, Rouge-Gorge.

Next, congratulations to everyone who made it through this round.

As for the stories I was following that didn't make it through this round, a few things stand out.

One of the things that stand out is the plot and how quite a few writers missed this in that their stories were filled with fluff material and no real plot direction -- aka, stuff that's there to fill the word count rather than being plot-relevant.

The second is, that none of the stories where the fandom fulfilled the prompt directly fared well, although one I noticed didn't meet the word count.

The third issue is trying to push modern concepts onto royalty and outright ignoring the fact royals have a duty to their people even in modern times, yet these stories felt the royals should put their wants and desires before that of their people. Which, there was more than one story that did that.

Oh, and speaking of which, the other story that I read using prompt 99 which I'm also doing a story for -- it was really dissatisfying coming across a story where the most unhinged family member felt like a joke when it comes to being unhinged, because all I got off that character was eccentric rather than unhinged, which is majorly different from say Ozai who is so unhinged he -- well, in canon he didn't hesitate in burning his own son's face when he displeased him.

Oh - and some may already be aware, but on April 15th the age of consent for characters featured in sexual content -- aka, material where the sex is being described -- goes from 16+ to 18+.

I really don't want to dive into the matter, but I do want to clarify this isn't a ban on characters under the age of eighteen having sex. It's a ban on describing the sexual acts of these characters, with non-sexual elements such as kissing and alluding to sex having taken place still being allowed. 

A minor reason behind the change is that while in Canada, the age of consent is sixteen and up, this isn't the case everywhere. I think the major reason, though, is there were a bunch of Young Adult and Teen Fic writers who forgot their target audience is thirteen and up and that YA/Teen Fic shouldn't have any content that would result in the work being marked as Mature, that once that happens it is no longer YA/Teen Fic which in turn stems from the misconception that the target audience wants characters that are the same age or three years older than them, which is actually a myth, which in turn led to people deciding what category something fit based on the age of the characters rather than whether it would be considered age appropriate.

The situation is also similar to ffnet when ffnet banned MA content, but the solution was to platform the unedited versions of stories elsewhere while choosing to keep an edited version up or remove the story completely. Which, at the end of the game ffnet removed the MA content from their site to avoid legal issues regarding MA content which could have had a negative impact on everyone else on the site, but because it involves a legal matter, no petition would result in the guidelines being changed back.

That's what I want to share regarding the matter with those following this.