SOF FanFic Guidelines
 January 6th, 2001

REQUIRED information 1. A title, author name, rating and sex/violence content, brief summary (would be nice but not required.) 2. Disclaimer strongly encouraged. (Sample DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters, Rysher does. I am very respectfully borrowing them with no intent to profit.) 3. If you submit a story in .txt or email format, it MUST have a blank space inserted between each paragraph. EXAMPLE of a clear, informative header. Title: "SOF in Siberia" By: unknown Rating: PG; minor violence Summary: The team travels to Siberia to rescue an imprisoned war veteran. COPYRIGHT ISSUES I mentioned above the importance of including a disclaimer with your fiction to make it clear that you do not intend to infringe the copyrights or trademarks held by others. Although fan fiction is a legal gray area, it is important to bear in mind that there are copyrights involved. RATINGS Prominent ratings are *required* for all stories. It should be specified what the nature of the material is. Please do not think that such a warning gives away aspects of the plot -- the idea is not to give anyone a surprise and make them regret reading a story. G - This is a piece, which contains nothing in theme, language, nudity and sex, violence, etc. Some snippets of language may go beyond polite conversation but they are common everyday expressions. No stronger words are present in G-rated stories. The violence is at a minimum. PG - There may be some profanity in these stories. There may be some violence. But these elements must not be intense. No sexual overtones. PG-13 - A story that goes beyond the boundaries of the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, or other contents, but does not quite fit within the restricted R category. If nudity is sexually oriented, the story will not be found in the PG-13 category. If violence is too rough or persistent, the story goes into the R (restricted) rating. A story's single use of one of the harsher sexually derived words, though only as an expletive, shall initially give the story at least a PG-13 rating. More than one such expletive will lead to an R rating, None of these harsher sexually derived words will be allowed if used in a sexual context. R - Stories that contain some adult material. For example, strong language and/or violence. May contain mild or implied sexual scenes. No harsh sexually derived words will be allowed if used in a sexual context. NC-17 (Not Allowed) - Any stories that contain explicit sex scenes (where the sex is written in and not implied), an accumulation of sexually oriented language, and/or scenes of excessive violence.