LynAlden on Nostr: There are some forms of age censorship or ratings that, when you examine them, are ...

There are some forms of age censorship or ratings that, when you examine them, are kind of backwards.

An example is the Yugioh dub. When Yugioh was dubbed into English and played on western cartoon networks, they didn’t want to show as much death as in the original Japanese version, even though they were for the same age group. Just different cultural standards. So for the dub they created the concept of the Shadow Realm, and so instead of getting killed by a death trap, someone will instead have their soul sent to an eternity of darkness. Hell, basically. This was considered more suitable for children as a concept: eternal darkness and unhappiness rather than physical death.

A lot of Brandon Sanderson books are kind of PG-13. There is a lot of action and death, but usually not a lot of blood or gore, curse words are in fantasy language and thus mostly don’t count. But like, some characters get magically tortured in agony for centuries. Just not in a bloody way.

My novel draft is basically a rated R book. Violence, blood, curses from characters that would curse, etc. But ironically far scarier things happen in Sanderson novels than mine! Nobody gets a century of agony in mine. Just good old fashion normal temporary agony. But because it’s more explicit, that makes it equivalent to R.