What Is Maturity?

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So yeah, over the years, I’ve basically become so desensitized to blood, gore and violence that I honestly can’t tell anymore: What is ‘mature’?

Honestly, I think that “The Vanilla God” isn’t very ‘mature’ in the sense that there is no profanity at all and there definitely won’t be any sexual content… at least not as far as I know.

I mean, in “Immortal Soul” I would downplay the sex and profanity to a certain extent, and the narrator of “Hardcore OP-ness” is pretty straightforward when it comes to describing what’s happening in the least vulgar way possible.  However, people still complain about everything being too vulgar, gory or offensive in every way possible.

It seriously makes me wonder if any of those people had ever actually seen porn before lol.  Have they ever read erotic novels?  I honestly don’t think they have, because I did a few times and it was well… smut.  That’s where the name comes from :P.

Maybe I’m too jaded nowadays?  Anyway, from my perspective, “Immortal Soul” is PG-13 at most, “Hardcore OP-ness” is like R-ish idk.  Every country and even different states have all kinds of ridiculous laws or restrictions.

Still, most people start having sex when they’re teenagers or younger; it’s just a fact lol.  Yet, we aren’t supposed to watch porn until we’re adults roflmao.  I personally think that people who watch porn from a very young age are less prone to having sex until they’re adults, simply because they aren’t nearly as sexually repressed.

Kids usually start cursing when they’re around 5-9 ‘because’ adults tell them that they aren’t allowed to do it lulz.  It’s pretty much the same kind of thing with drugs, alcohol, etctera… I remember having friends in middle-school who were already addicted to nicotine or had become alcoholics.

People who watch violent movies/television shows, or play gory video-games generally don’t feel the primal urges for physical violence as much.  Most people still do have them though… It’s just human nature and the more you try to repress your desires, the more ‘dangerous’ it becomes.

Anyway, my point is that I hate censorship and felt like complaining about it lol.  Now, go ahead and argue with each other in the comments :).

Is “The Vanilla God” mature?

 

By the way, if you liked/read this story, can you vote-up on here?  “Novel Translations” There are a lot of people who hate me on reddit and make it their mission that anything I post gets downvoted….

62 thoughts on “What Is Maturity?”

  1. you should take the story where you feel like it
    the rating can be arbitrary so just make a short notice of content in the story like they do with video games short so it does not spoil but still informative
    *violence *sexual themes *philosophic content ect. as it progresses
    i however suggest that you put it in at the chapter list since it just ruins the flow when authors make explanation
    explanations, questions, polls and surveys , notices or other thing should be in comments or in (status board) or (polls and surveys) (story board information ark 1 ark 2 ect) since it is out off place like finding a shopping list on a page after a cliff hanger
    i am making the post since i have not read a book where the author puts non story things in them like Leave a comment or sorry that i am late

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    • Yeah, I don’t do that on actual chapters… at least not that I remember. I’m not totally sure if I kept the ‘Author notes’ from Immortal Soul in the chapters… Like, when I was posting them on Royalroadl, it was kinda necessary to put the Author Notes inside of the chapter because otherwise people won’t even look at them. On my blog though, I can just make a separate post for that kinda shit :).

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  5. Wow… The topic and the comments that followed were quite interesting. While I haven’t read “Vanilla God”, I have read IS, HOPness, and part of HK so I can understand some of the opinions given. So first let’s address the ratings system and how it applies to books, movies, songs etc because this seems to be a confusing area for some.

    Rating system is a tool for parents/teachers in helping their kids or themselves determine what is appropriate for them.
    Not all children are created and or raised the same, meaning you have different levels of understanding and comprehension. Your child might know and understand the topic but to others it could be a new and confusing situation. Child A could find it funny while child B could find it highly upsetting.
    Child A would know this is wrong and why it’s wrong while child B could think that it’s okay or right and might enact such behavior that could be harmful to themselves or others.
    Hence the ratings system, because without the aid of a parent/teacher to help guide/answer any questions that might be foreign, a misinterpretation of set material could potentially be harmful to mental or physical development of said child and could even be traumatizing.
    For an adult your books are fine but anyone under 18 should have parental supervision because the content in your books are quite graphic, suggestive, and misleading.

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    • That’s the original purpose of a rating system, but now days it’s more of a legal restriction which attempts to prevent everyone below a certain age from legally watching/reading anything that the government deems inappropriate for them rofl.

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      • That’s only because the amount of content exceeds the level of available supervision and what’s deemed acceptable or inappropriate has a very broad definition. So instead of trying appeal to everyone which is near impossible, they go with a uniform approach that fits the majority or norm. In a sue happy world where your liable for the material you make, ratings system can also protect you from a lawsuit.

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      • We’re only human, if we had more self control, acceptance, and a better understanding of each other and ourselves than creativity would rain supreme. Alas we have our limits, and with them are conditions we have to follow or society as we know it could crumble. Story of Icarus is an fitting description for our situation. To high we burn, to low we drown. It’s only when treading the middle ground that offers the safest, but not to be confused with the best, path.

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      • Well, everything should be done in moderation lol. Still though, everyone lacks self-control in certain areas, and that’s fine as long as it doesn’t harm others. Societies tend to crumble after placing too many restrictions. They usually thrive when the limits are removed lol. Anyway, I don’t really feel like getting into a political argument, so I’m gonna stop talking now.

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  6. I was going to put a few of my thoughts down, but my cat attacked me so i cant remember what i was going to write anymore.. Well, i guess ill just put this instead~ age limitation is kinda irrelevant, like for instance i hit puberty around 12/13 i think? it wasn’t even till i was 14/15 that i noticed that i was interested in sex or porn, or that i was attracted to the opposite sex… (yeah i was kinda slow shhh..) but i remember hearing other classmates start talking about sexjokes when they were 13-14… So, for the most part teens and up should be fine with basicly anything writen, but if it starts to go into detail about the things like sex and gore then its kinda seems to be meant for older teen and up instead of younger teen and up…. so i guess id rate harem reaper, immortal soul, and opness as 16-18+ while id rate vanilla god as 13-14+? eh sound about right to me… although it now looks kinda like i was trying to write simple math equations…

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    • Lmao, yeah, everybody is different… Personally though, I think I masturbated for the first time when I was like 2 years old, so I might be a little weird? Idk, when I was born, I had so much hair that my parents and my grandparents thought I was a dog or monkey or something roflmao. I started growing facial hair when I was like 7 or 8 years old. I stopped growing at like 15 or 16 years old, I think? Anyway, the point is that everything is relative. I lost my virginity when I was 17, but I remember having friends in elementary school who were sexually active… Everyone is different. We like to pretend like there are these concrete ‘ages’ that define how mature a person is and what they’re allowed to do, but it’s all just politics in the end.

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  7. Hi mike777ac,
    I don’t usually comment on a unrelated post, but I couldn’t find your email.
    So here is a idea/request: since you’re writing/posting multiple series, how about naming them on the post title?
    It gets confusing when using the feed or even when opening the site to check for new chapters.
    Example: ‘Immortal Soul Chapter 11: Envy’, or ‘TVG Chapter 6: The First Daughter’.
    Keep up the great work, love your writing!
    ps.: add a contact/about section. 😀

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    • I would do that, but idk how those other guys do it… Like, they have 2 separate posts, but one of them is invisible? idfk how to do that lol. If I figure out how, I’ll start doing that rofl. It’ll probably give me twice as many views too, because people will have to click 2 posts instead of one :P. However, as long as you open the email, you can see what story it’s from by the tags and categories… I’m pretty sure there’s also a way to set it so that certain tags cause the email to go to spam, while others just go through normally, but idk how you do that.

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      • Yeah I thought it could require some work, but was worth mentioning I guess. I’m only speculating but guys like Ren from WuxiaWorld and GGP from Gravity seems approachable on reddit, I don’t your relationship with them or the community but maybe someone there could point you in the right direction?
        As for the feeds I use a feed reader (gReader), with all the sites of novels that I follow, so I don’t really know about the email feed tags and such. Probably will begin using it.
        Thanks for the quick response.

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      • Yeah, I follow everything by email :). Either way though, the tags and categories show up pretty much everywhere, that’s what they’re for lol. Pretty sure the tags or categories are how Aho-Updates and other sites like that do what they do.

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  8. I think the problem stems from how Vanilla God, Immortal Soul, and HCOPness used “mature” content; it’s not that one or the other has more mature themes or content, but that the way they employ said content changes how mature people will perceive it. For example, HCOPness and Immortal Soul have highly similar amounts of violence and sex, but HCOPness is much more casual or perhaps even flippant with that violence and sex. The long descriptions of necrophilia and killing and gore are treated as trivial, as a matter of course, which can push the highly adult content away from “mature” and into puerile or (for lack of a better term) gauche territory. Vanilla God on the other hand contains similarly adult undertones and content but the something in the sparsity of description or the narrators perspective places the mature stuff onto the backburner of importance, leaving the story and characters at a forefront with adult content as an accent or touching-off point for them. HCOPness and, to a much lesser degree, Immortal Soul have the adult themes in a place of importance equal or sometimes above other aspects of the story, which can be really off-putting when that isn’t what you are looking for in “mature” reading. I suppose it breaks down into being mature like a Deadpool comic or mature like The Watchman, highly similar material with drastically different executions.

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    • True, but my problem is that for the most part, it’s all just a grey area for me. Literally the only thing that can even slightly disturb me is slavery and rape. I mean, it’s always bothered me a bit, but it wasn’t until after I started writing Immortal Soul that I just couldn’t read or watch anything with either slavery or rape in it. For example, a few years ago, Spartacus was a show that I used to watch… I watched the whole thing and while I did get pissed off, it’s nothing compared to what happens now days lol. Maybe I’ve built up an allergy to it? On the other hand, barely anything else bothers me anymore. I’ve seen so many doctor shows like House, Saving Hope, even Bones or other similar things…

      The point is that if I can’t even censor myself anymore, because I no longer know what I ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ rofl. Back on Royalroad, when I started working on Immortal Soul, people freaked out because I said fuck a few times… People also freaked out when I wrote a story in first-person perspective of a woman lol. Basically, if you didn’t write in a ‘specific’ way over there, people would tear you apart. That’s one of the main reasons I lost my motivation with Immortal Soul…

      Anyway, I can’t even remember what I was talking about anymore roflmao.

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  9. I haven’t read it yet but taking your word for it I can tell you the world is full of “babies” (for lack of use of the other B-word) Put them on your mental ignore filter and do you because there are plenty who like that.

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  11. I don’t think that mature is a good description, I prefer the ‘age+’ tag. Vanilla God would be 12/13+, because a significant number of 12/13 year olds would a little disturbed by it, although by no means a majority(judging by the three chapters I’ve read). HOPNess’ would be 18+, because a lot of 18 year olds and under would be disturbed by it, including me.

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    • I honestly doubt that there would be a whole lot of 12-13 year olds who would be interested in reading in general roflmao. Hell, I didn’t start reading until I was 22 :P. I obviously ‘could’ read pretty well since I was a little kid, but school essentially made me hate reading/writing.

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      • I actually started reading a lot when I was 8 or 9 but stopped when I turned 13 because school took all the fun out of it by forcing us, but I do think I would have enjoyed reading these stories when I was 12-13 including HOpness, hell I would probably have even liked reading harem reaper back then, The age thing is more of a guide for the protective parent so they now that there children shouldn’t watch or read something before a certain age because it could be unsettling for them, and that age being the upper limit for the majority. But most would be fine before reaching that age, so by that standard vanilla god would probably be 15 and over because of the gender ambiguity and breastfeeding, it could be lowered to 12 if chapter 5/6 is the upper limit in that regard.

        As an example, I had to read the book parfume the story of a murderer for my german class, and at the end of the story there is a massive orgy of more then ten-thousand people against there will, and that is already a bit iffy but seeing that the age range is 17-19 that isn’t a problem, but what was a problem is that there were a few hundred children involved in that. And the general consensus between the students that read the book was that it really was inappropriate to have made us read that book so the advice of 18+ wouldn’t even have been enough.
        While a happy go lucky murdering spree by jasmin if not described in too much detail would be a perfectly fine for a 12 year old.

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      • lol, yeah, I honestly don’t know if I would have enjoyed reading anything back when I was a kid or even a teenager. Basically, I used to only watch moves and normal televisions shows, while playing video games until I was around 18. Then I started watching anime… after a year of that, I started reading manga. Then after 2 years of hardcore manga-reading, I ran out of things to read and descending into the hellish cesspit aka webnovels roflmao.

        Of course, between 17 and 19 I was in a relationship for the first and only time in my life so far. My ex got me addicted to anime and also got me started with writing lol.

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      • I had a scarily similar experience where my first girlfriend at the age of 16 got me into anime and after that manga which then led onto light novels and web-novels when I was 18, although I’m not much of a writer myself I do really enjoy reading these stories as they give a very different experience from more well known literary works which make you want shoot the author so he would stop trying to make you want to fall asleep every time you turn the page.

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      • /agree, well, I just wouldn’t read a book that was boring lol. Also, I don’t like physical books because I have OCD and I can’t wash them. I don’t like touching things that can’t be washed…

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  12. Depends on what you mean by that classification… For a mature audience or from a mature author.

    Fart jokes: Not mature. You have to be pretty dead in the head to think those are funny.
    Torture porn: Not mature either. That’s just stupid nonsense which is usually created for pre-teens and teens. Excessive violence like in Hobo With A Shotgun may be for adults, but definitely more for the inner child of said adults.
    Sexual violence: Not appropriate, but not mature either, unless you approach the topic to make the reader think about it critically. Kids shouldn’t have to read about it in detail, but it’s also important that they know it exists and what the consequences are.
    Philosophy: Definitely mature. I’ve just read The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest and it sent my head spinning about the Fermi paradox and the universe at large. Treat with care, kids won’t like it because they’re too stupid to think for themselves.

    In general I’d say Vanilla God seems fairly family friendly so far, so is Immortal Soul (although the absolute inconsistency of the story, constantly shifting perspectives and that the entire world is unsubstantial and self-contradictory is annoying and makes it very painful to read at times), whereas I absolutely hated Hardcore-OPness for some reason after the very fifth chapter and never again read any more about it, so I can’t evaluate it.

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    • I honestly have no clue what happened in chapter 5 that pissed you off so much lol. Most people didn’t start complaining until around chapter 76 rofl.

      Yeah, what I’m talking about censorship though, not literal maturity…. That’s not supposed to be a pun roflmao.

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      • I don’t think it was chapter 5 specifically that pissed me off, it was the journey until then.

        Don’t ever censor yourself, unless you wouldn’t want to read about something at the age your target audience is at. When I was 12 I sure didn’t want to read about waterboarding, etc. and how nice it is as a sport for three-letter-agency-employees.

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      • I’ve always thought that waterboarding was relatively weak, as far as torture techniques go, but well, the purpose isn’t to torture the person, but to interrogate them. Whether it’s reading, watching or performing waterboarding, I wouldn’t really be interested personally… too boring imo.

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      • Don’t I know it…
        There are much more creative torture methods tho. Pain is such a badly developed system… I hate push notifications >_>

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      • Pain is a push notification. Sensory nerves in your body detect defects/malfunctions and start blaring their “SOMETHING’S FUCKING WRONG M8” signal to the brain. That’s a push notification. The brain then has to deal with the notifications, but it can’t dismiss them, because they keep coming. Pull notifications would be if the brain periodically queried all sensory nerves if they detected any malfunctions/defects and then received a yes/no answer. Such answers could then be ignored or assigned a priority, etc. and would be easier to handle

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      • A better system would be a push/pull system: Sensory nerves don’t do anything until they detect that their status has changed from undamaged to damaged, then they loudly scream “U WOT M8” once towards the brain, which then goes into disaster detection mode and starts querying the affected nerves for changes for a while, until the undamaged state is restored. You know how your arm hurts like hell after you’ve broken it? That’s because the nerves are constantly spamming your brain with “U WOT M8”, even tho your brain is fully aware that shit went down and you’ve already gotten a cast and the arm is going to be totally fine, but the fucking nerves are still going on your fucking nerves and should shut the fucking hell up all-fucking-ready. 😉

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      • Oh… yeah idk, I think my body kinda acts like that though? Like, if I have an injury, as long as I know what’s wrong, I can usually ignore the pain pretty well. Although, I do have an extremely high tolerance for pain…

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      • Well, depends on the situation, cause I can’t ignore headaches… Usually, I get really bad cystic acne around the back of my neck or sometimes near my temples; the majority of my headaches are caused by the cyst pressing on something and cutting off circulation :(.

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      • When I have a particular body part that hurts for some reason, I try to cause as much pain on that part as I can, for example if a joint in my finger hurts, I bend my finger in such a way that the original pain is at it’s maximum possible and then hold it like that for a while until the pain levels normalize. Then I let go and poof, the pain is bearable. When I had extreme acne I applied very strong pressure on the spots that hurt… It’s not the scientific way to do it but it works. I generally try to take as few meds as possible, because your body develops immunities against medicine the more often you take it and that *really* sucks when you really need it, but you’re immune. Ask anyone who’s taken morphine for a prolonged time. They could take more morphine for days and wouldn’t even notice. That’s why it’s usually restricted to people with terminal illnesses, because by the time they’re immune, they’re probably dead.

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      • Yeah, I try not to take too much of anything… but at the same time, it’s really bad to allow severe pain or discomfort to exist when you have a way to remove it. The damage brought on by taking a few ibuprofen every now and then is a lot lower than the psychological stress of not taking it and just attempting to ‘ignore’ the problem lol. Sleeping off headaches doesn’t really work for me either; usually I wake up with one that’s even worse. So my current motto is, avoid anxiety!

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      • I don’t mind a bit of pain usually. I used pretty aggressive words previously when I described the broken arm, but that bit of pain usually doesn’t really bother me. What’s that saying? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
        What I find much more disturbing is delirium in a fever for example. When you have a fever and in your brain you just can’t make sense of your surroundings and you feel out of place and really weird. That’s what I find much more disturbing than a little injury.

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      • Yeah, I don’t like being in an altered state of mind. For example, not long ago, I barely got any sleep because I couldn’t lay down. Anyway, I got really depressed and started hallucinating etcetera… Once I got some sleep though, a lot of my problems were totally gone. Well, I did start taking antibiotics too; I may have had an ear infection, or some other problem, which was causing the weird symptoms I was feeling. Who knows? The point is that, even though I know what to do now to fix that kinda problem, I was in an altered state of mind at the time. I couldn’t think rationally.

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      • I really hate that. That’s also why I don’t smoke weed or drink alcohol. Being drunk or high on weed isn’t *as* bad, but I hate having my mind impaired. I was very close to killing myself once in a fever-delirium, not because I wanted to, or because it was too much, but just because I couldn’t make sense of my own thoughts anymore and I didn’t know what I was doing. That was some pretty scary stuff in hindsight.

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      • Yeah, like, immediately after I got some sleep, I was back to normal, but when I was up for so long, it was like I was a totally different person. Kinda makes me feel like my soul left my body and I was replaced by someone else roflmao.

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