What kinds of Crap have you Gotten Past the Radar?

...OK, so I realize that a lot of us (being unpublished) don't have "radars" per se, but have you attempted to slip anything into your works that's beyond the target age group and/or rating on your story, be it necessary (on a place like Fanfiction.net) or unecessary (all you have is a self-imposed rating)? And even if you write for an audience that's as mature as it gets (whatever that means), have you still tried to get anything sly in there?

In my Suenyaverse stories, I've twice now had a character (in a moment of serious panic) use the oath "Rad's stones!" Swearing by the various parts of their gods is par for the course in the Suenyaverse, but "[Insert God Here]'s eyes/teeth!" is more common. So I wonder how many people will catch that "stones" is an archaic word for "testicles?"

I almost never state outright that two characters are in a gay relationship. I just let the reader figure it out from their interactions. Those who don't want to see it are free to pretend it's not there.

I've gotten more subtle female-female dominance things under the radar, and no one notices other than to say Girl on Girl Is Hot - I stated it outright in an Alternate Universe piece, and then people started seeing it - some, anyway. Most of it has to do with social-class (noblewoman and prostitute) and obedience (the strong-willed prostitute willingly defers to the noblewoman, and doesn't, with this particular person, mind enough to be bothered by it).

I don't so much sneak crap past the radar so much as I coat the radar in crap and then destroy it with a cruise missile. Then again, the radar in question is FF.net, so the radar doesn't really pay attention until your traffic hits a certain point or someone complains.

A partially completed short film script I'm working on has a character who uses Rhyming Slang correctly and without clarification - leading to a few sexual/biological-based comments which would only be comprehended by someone who knows what "Bristols" are or a "J. Arfur" is.

Anachronistic as hell as it's Far Future SF, but a lot of fun.

There is going to be a lot of this once I manage to write through a novel.

If only I can remember at least one instance...

...Oh, awhile ago I filmed a short video on Greek democracy and aristocracy, using Greek gods as characters. Here's one line said by Aphrodite, the goddess of love, paraphrase:

Few people, including the teacher I presented it to, got the joke.

General perversion, female-on-male rape, a room full of blood and a stuck corpse in a story I wrote for my Creative Writing class.

I'm in a HS creative writing class and I have yet to have anyone notice the presence of The Vamp.

Not so much anything sexual, but I did put a parody of The Bible in a Sailor Moon fanfic and I'm surprised no one has flamed me over it yet. It was part of a chapter that generally makes fun of Christian fundamentalists who tell people to follow the Bible literally and exactly and that everything in it is literally true but that they themselves don't necessarily read it. It didn't actually use Christian characters or the Bible itself, but an obviously similar book that I made up for the story.

edited 25th May '11 9:51:09 AM by Rainbow

I wrote a story for my WGST class where I did this. My WGST teacher was insisting that women are never abusers, so I put a female child sexual abuser in my story. However, I made it acceptable to her by having the woman be forced into abusing by a man (which is true of 50% of female sexual abusers). I think it was a tutorial leader, not the actual prof, who marked it, because she complimented me on 'raising awareness of female abusers'.

Whatever stuff I publish, I pretty much hang it on the .net.

There's no radar. If I faced a radar, I'd build my own web page.

I wrote a short story involving a lonely, isolated, slowly turning insane astronaut stationed on a mining colony on mars that states, in a blatant manner, that he basically wishes he could have relations with the planet for my creative writing class in school.

For whatever reason, my creative writing teacher didn't catch it, even though he usually forbids unnecessary sexual content in our stories.

That doesn't sound like unnecessary sexual content, its looks kinda like the point of the story.

We were presenting multiple greek myths in class.

One of them was Leda and the Swan. Zeus = swan who raped Leda.

Then we did Theseus. On his way to Athens, he killed a guy who was stretching people on trees, and raped his daughter.

This was the slide I used.

Not really getting crap past the radar, since EVERYONE got it, and the "ahahahahaohhhhhhhhh" was so...worth it.

Another less than PG slide:

Zeus having sex with Danae

edited 25th May '11 11:57:19 AM by MrAHR

I don't have a radar, because I never show my works to anyone. I also wouldn't really want to try and get things past it, because I don't really enjoy R-rated works anyway - I neither like nor am any good at writing sex scenes, and as a real life exemplar of Gosh Dang It to Heck!, I'm uncomfortable writing strong language - I will do it for characters who work that way, but I certainly wouldn't put in gratuitous swearing.

There is some stuff in my comics that clashes a little with their general tone, but I didn't bother to hide it, so it's not really an example either.

Most books do not need a radar. No one cares about what goes into books, music, less so. Movies? Kind of. TV? More so? Video Games? Villagers and moral guardians riot.

Since I work with text alone, no one cares at all really. I have no radar to speak of.

One of the areas where I fall down in school is languages, particularly Irish, so to save face (in my own head) I slip plenty of high-brow jokes and references into Irish compositions. For example, a recent letter done in class, which involved writing a letter to a French family you stayed with over the summer:

''Dear family de Sade, Greetings from Ireland. I hope everyone there is doing well. I had a wonderful time with you in Saló. Also, how are Justine and Juliette feeling?''

Sadly I never got to hand it up, but it would have been fantastic if the radar actually caught this one.

Applause for that one.

Here's an example: "But you've always had a 'thing' for guys. Didn't you ever notice how cool that biker looked back at that tower?" He looked away from her at the last second, feeling rather steamed up for no reason? "Yes, rather masculine, and his confused eyes were the most brilliant shade of green I've ever seen." He mumbled, "But you're pale after what I said."

edited 26th May '11 2:58:51 AM by sabrina_diamond

I never really worried too much about the radar, (don't like, don't read, yanno?) but I do like to leave the potentially explicit details out so that readers can make their own assumptions.

For instance, there's a scene in my maybe-comic Meager Cure where Ripley, the Ladette Wrench Wench who's spent years traveling the South alone, is shocked to discover just how naive 11-year-old Farren is about, er, the birds and the bees. Ripley reassures Farren's guardian, Del, that she'll explain everything in an honest, gentle way, and takes Farren outside their RV to talk to her. Del watches them through the window but, unable to hear what they're saying, is more than a little confounded by Ripley's wild, theatrical gestures. She flails her arms, repeatedly pounds her fist into the table, and gives a dramatic 'spider-like' twitching with her fingers: all with a livid, slightly horrified expression. Farren returns looking very confused and a little frightened, but Del thinks better of asking her exactly what Ripley said.

Of course, we have no earthly idea what Ripley was talking about or if it was even obscene to begin with; but her bizarre kinetics imply, to most people, that she either knows absolutely nothing about sex, or that she knows way too much to be describing to a kid. Either way, the Noodle Incident quality makes it funny. So I often avoid explicitly detailing the 'unsavory' conversations or actions, not because I'm afraid of showing them, but because it's usually a lot more amusing to let people guess about them on their own.

I've stuck tons of subtle hints throughout one of the stories that I'm writing about one character having the hots for another character. The only reason why it's not just outright and explicitly stated is because my reader really...really...really hates the pairing.