Meta: Further Consideration of Taboos in Fanfiction (LotR)
On Certain Elements of Plot
This post references the DVD commentary I did on my Lord of the Rings fic Mother of Horses.
I'd like to make it clear that these are mostly opinions here, that very few of them are set in stone, and that I expect some opinions to change. Eventually.
I don't want to call the issues of rape and incest that were present in MoH 'themes' - I think that 'plot elements' are more accurate.
My own, personal feelings and mores about these two 'elements' are...not as simple as I would like them. Incest bugs me - the thought of indulging in it myself is repulsive, I can not make the jump to apply 'normal and healthy' to people who would chose to do so, and I can not accept the idea that 'it doesn't hurt any one.'
Logically, there is no reason for me to hold to this position. My own studies of genetics have taught me that the human population can certainly survive the miniscule amount of homogenization of the gene pool that rare sib-sib or parent-child inbreeding would produce. Assuming that no severe defects were involved, any children would not be noticeably compromised. And besides, children need not be the result of any marriage or coupling. Given the broad range of sexual activities that the human animal can indulge in, heterosexual incest between adults (especially siblings) is actually pretty tame stuff. Certain aristocratic families in various geographic areas and various eras of history have practiced it, with a greater or lesser amount of ill effect. A variation - cousin-cousin marriages - are even considered quite normal in Great Britain, if not in the United States.
As for the question of mental or emotional abuse, and the role of power within a family - that is harder to get around. But we're talking adults, right? Adults know their own mind. And we're moving further and further away from any historical concept of 'family'.
It's still wrong, fucked up, and obscene. And it's wrong to pretend otherwise, or to stand by and allow others to pretend otherwise.
Rape bothers me too. But on this one I'm a bit fuzzier - partly because the modern definition of rape casts its net just a hair too broad for me. Stranger rape - that one's easy. It's wrong to fuck someone you don't know, more wrong to fuck someone who is protesting that they don't want any part of this sexual intimacy. Wrong, fucked up, and obscene. Also, in the US, a capital crime. Which means the state gets to kill the bastard, and that lethal force to prevent rape is justified under the law.
But what of the 'date rape'? Of that fuzzy line that gets pushed - when the question 'you wanna have sex' never gets asked, and so the other never has to say yes, verbally - because that's not lady-like, because that's too easy, because you weren't sure four beers ago but he might be able to convince you now. And the hand on your hip feels good, and so does the other hand on your breast, and now his mouth...And how is he supposed to know you didn't intend to let it go that far?
What about 'established relationships' where the woman agrees to sex because it fills a space in her bed and in her life, and unless she opens her legs, the gap in her days stays empty, too?
What about when you're married to the love of your life and he comes home late, after a bad day at the office, a worse night at the bar, and wants to crawl back inside you, because that will make him feel better, if not all right. You have your own troubles and your own worries and your back aches, but he wants to fuck and you're going to have to hit him to stop him. If you don't, he'll remember in the morning that he was rough, and apologize, and tell you that just waking up with you keeps him going, even when the whole world is out to get him. But if you decide you don't want to ache *there* as well, you will have to bloody his lip, and in the morning he remember that he was miserable and hurting and you pushed him away.
And what of the popular opinion (there are more than one popular opinion) that the woman - no matter her actions, her dress, her words - has the right to say no, no matter how weakly, and have that be the end of it?
Forcing sex on someone who doesn't want it is wrong. Using the threat of forcing sex to get something you otherwise wouldn't get is wrong. Using the promise of sex to get something you wouldn't otherwise get is wrong. Using sex as a substitute for learning to go it alone is wrong. Using sex to fill an empty space is wrong. And sometimes just having sex is a bad idea. And sometimes you could find better things to do than have sex. Sometimes sex is more fun than the other things you could be doing. Sometimes sex makes you closer to the other person involved. Sometimes sex is how the two of you are making a baby. Sometimes sex is part of the reason why there's this blurry line between your soul and the other.
I am still bothered by my having written (much less posted) a story that uses these two elements. Because I'm not sure if I used them properly, to attain the effect I wanted to have.
I don't like stories with incest or rape for the same reason I don't like stories about people who give up - I don't want to think about that sort of thing going on. Well, one could say, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away, now is it? No, it won't. And the writer part of me says, Tell the story that needs to be told. Stories are not real life, but they need to have some of the things of real life - people, events, issues.
I think stories - fiction, fanfic, what have you - have the ability to affect the way we see things. I think that while most of us can draw a line between 'real' and 'story', I think that stories can expose us to ideas and concepts we weren't familiar with or didn't agree with before. We applaud stories that use minority characters and oppressed people and show us 'life from their eyes'. To some extent, repeated themes in literature - be they environmental awareness, rejection of oppressive status quo, the hypocrisy of those in power or the glory of military service, whatever - get absorbed into popular culture. They can even *change* popular culture. For a prime example in US history - Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Stories can have a normalizing affect - they do for me. Repeat something over and over again, in book after book, and a part of me accepts it as everyday, usual. I stop flinching. I start thinking 'everyone says that, why don't I agree?'
This is not, obviously, always a good thing.
Which is why I have trouble with some things as plot elements.
Part of the reason some people don't want slash labeled is because they want readers - especially readers who would avoid slash for 'unworthy' reasons (ie homophobia) - to become accustomed to the notion of homosexual sexual intimacy as normal. If readers read more slash, it wouldn't bother them as much. Which is (at least for me) true enough.
I see much the same thing happening with RPS - some people object to, have always objected to it, but a growing fraction of fandom doesn't see a problem with it. And as RPS is admitted to more and more lists and archives, it is those groups and people who *don't* accept RPS who stand out. And the proponents of greater RPS acceptance say, 'who does it hurt? It's just a story.'
So what happens when we read more stories that feature sex between a brother and sister? (Lord of the Rings, Firefly, Lost Boys, Harry Potter, Due South - I'm looking at all of you. And double for Harry Potter, for the Twincest. And Buffy, for the Dawn/Buffy.)
What happens when we read more stories about older men having sex with the youths under their care/control? What happens when we expand that to 'older men having sex with their own children?' (The entirety of the 'chan' sub genre of anime, Harry Potter, Buffy, Angel - both the Sire/Childe issues and the Connor entanglements - Batman...)
What happens when we read such stories placed in the POV of the youth, and we see that, in this story, the youth actually *craves* this contact, is healed by it, is strengthened by it, finds the intercourse enjoyable and a part of growning towards adulthood? So far, a very real fear of running afoul of pedophilia laws has kept this down enough that I personally haven't come across it. I do not doubt that such stories exist.
What happens when we read stories about rape - about the aftermath of rape, about the experience of rape as a healing event for the rapist? What about rape where the victim actually enjoys the experience? I can think of two stories in due South, and one in Angel. There is an archive for 'angst' fics, with a section exclusively for rape.
So what happens when we, I, as reader, start accepting these as 'everyday'?
Worse yet, for me - what if we start writing them for the purpose of sexual titillation - of using such things 'because they're hot?' Of encouraging their consumption.
I don't know about other writers, but me, my writing, my characters and my plots - they stay in my brain much longer than do the stories of other people.
So what happens?
Fuck if I know. And I'm not just being coy, even though I am avoiding giving a straight answer. I don't know.
There is a part of me that hates the idea of warnings on fics, loathes the artificial distinctions between het, slash, and gen, despises the library system that divides fiction by genre and age group instead of by novel size or author's name. This part wants to spin words into nets and snares fine as spider-webs, broad as clipper anchor-lines, and cast them out to see what readers I sieve from the sea. Write what I will, leave the reader to grown in their own mind.
This part would have been a wandering bard, ages back, moving from town to town, stealing a phrase here, a line there, telling jokes about the king and translating the same ribald story into a dozen languages.
There is another part, though, that thinks the storyteller can not be separated from the community of listeners, and that the assumption of artist as creator and the rest of humanity as consumer is a gross mischaracterization at best, and at worst a sham of pretentious elitism. The scientist part that thinks a strict recording of events - the scribe sitting by the fireside - is a thing beyond price. A part that thinks the best stories are true ones, and that while truth is not accuracy, there is much to be gained from attempting a high degree of realism. The stories I tell are about people - the characters might be a meld of faces I have never seen, but they live and breath. If I tell the story right, a listener suspends disbelief and says, that could happen, I have seen that happen. Or a listener might read of a character and say - that is me.
The same part of me that accepts my responsibility as a reader also pushes me to accept my responsibility as a writer. I can say 'it's not my fault what a person thinks about what I wrote', except that, well, yes, it is. Those words didn't come out of thin air - I connected them and put them together and used a bit of art to make them enticing. And I did so - as a reasonable adult - well able to guess what people would think of what I said. And what they would feel about it. Or what they might feel about it.
That part of me baulks at the thought of drawing a murder and saying, 'look, here, she's not so bad, can't you accept her?' Of setting a sister beside a brother and saying, 'couple, then, if it gives you comfort, and damn those who would cry foul'. Of having a man rise from between his victim's bloody thighs refreshed, invigorated, and ready to defeat the evil villain. Because sometimes a good fuck cures everything.
I hesitated to post this story because I didn't want to be part of the normalization process for any mind that had wondered, 'Am I the only one who thinks women actually want to be raped?'
Just as I would not set a knife down in front of a three-year old, just as I would not give a stranger's child a beer, I'm beginning to think that I should think twice before I put dangerous ideas into the web without a warning or a lock.
I've read more than a few rape fics, and (here lately) more than a few incest fics. Which seem to have been proliferating as of late. It was JennyO, I think, who, last year, called incest fic 'the new orange', and noted that the oddest people were posting such fics.
'My' fandom - as much as I have one - is Farscape, with the weirdest damn relationship to painful, gut crunching plot elements that I have ever seen. You name it, the show has done it. Including several varieties of rape. But that doesn't show up in fic that often.
Another of my favorite fandoms is Firefly, where incest of the severely fucked up kind trembles on the line of being canon. And then there is Lord of the Rings and 'Rohan-cest'. (I really don't like the cute names. Like Twincest or Wescest. Like I said, normalization.)
I like and appreciate and enjoy the stories that take difficult elements - family rejection, violence both sexual and not, fucked-up family relationships, non-standard romances - and build good, intriguing stories around them. I don't care for - and I wish there were fewer - stories that whitewashed over those issues, that pretend such things don't hurt, that don't share out blame in a realistic fashion, that depicted pain to satisfy kink and that try to pretend that a good fuck cures everything.
I don't want to say, I wrote this right, the way everyone else writes fics with rape or incest or grits with milk is wrong.
I don't know if I hit the right notes in Mother of Horses. I got a couple feedbacks that seemed to hint otherwise - people wanted more of the incest.
I got feedback that said, This was a hard story, this hurt. And the writing was beautiful. Which means that for some readers, I wrote the words right, so they saw what I wanted to show.
This post references the DVD commentary I did on my Lord of the Rings fic Mother of Horses.
I'd like to make it clear that these are mostly opinions here, that very few of them are set in stone, and that I expect some opinions to change. Eventually.
I don't want to call the issues of rape and incest that were present in MoH 'themes' - I think that 'plot elements' are more accurate.
My own, personal feelings and mores about these two 'elements' are...not as simple as I would like them. Incest bugs me - the thought of indulging in it myself is repulsive, I can not make the jump to apply 'normal and healthy' to people who would chose to do so, and I can not accept the idea that 'it doesn't hurt any one.'
Logically, there is no reason for me to hold to this position. My own studies of genetics have taught me that the human population can certainly survive the miniscule amount of homogenization of the gene pool that rare sib-sib or parent-child inbreeding would produce. Assuming that no severe defects were involved, any children would not be noticeably compromised. And besides, children need not be the result of any marriage or coupling. Given the broad range of sexual activities that the human animal can indulge in, heterosexual incest between adults (especially siblings) is actually pretty tame stuff. Certain aristocratic families in various geographic areas and various eras of history have practiced it, with a greater or lesser amount of ill effect. A variation - cousin-cousin marriages - are even considered quite normal in Great Britain, if not in the United States.
As for the question of mental or emotional abuse, and the role of power within a family - that is harder to get around. But we're talking adults, right? Adults know their own mind. And we're moving further and further away from any historical concept of 'family'.
It's still wrong, fucked up, and obscene. And it's wrong to pretend otherwise, or to stand by and allow others to pretend otherwise.
Rape bothers me too. But on this one I'm a bit fuzzier - partly because the modern definition of rape casts its net just a hair too broad for me. Stranger rape - that one's easy. It's wrong to fuck someone you don't know, more wrong to fuck someone who is protesting that they don't want any part of this sexual intimacy. Wrong, fucked up, and obscene. Also, in the US, a capital crime. Which means the state gets to kill the bastard, and that lethal force to prevent rape is justified under the law.
But what of the 'date rape'? Of that fuzzy line that gets pushed - when the question 'you wanna have sex' never gets asked, and so the other never has to say yes, verbally - because that's not lady-like, because that's too easy, because you weren't sure four beers ago but he might be able to convince you now. And the hand on your hip feels good, and so does the other hand on your breast, and now his mouth...And how is he supposed to know you didn't intend to let it go that far?
What about 'established relationships' where the woman agrees to sex because it fills a space in her bed and in her life, and unless she opens her legs, the gap in her days stays empty, too?
What about when you're married to the love of your life and he comes home late, after a bad day at the office, a worse night at the bar, and wants to crawl back inside you, because that will make him feel better, if not all right. You have your own troubles and your own worries and your back aches, but he wants to fuck and you're going to have to hit him to stop him. If you don't, he'll remember in the morning that he was rough, and apologize, and tell you that just waking up with you keeps him going, even when the whole world is out to get him. But if you decide you don't want to ache *there* as well, you will have to bloody his lip, and in the morning he remember that he was miserable and hurting and you pushed him away.
And what of the popular opinion (there are more than one popular opinion) that the woman - no matter her actions, her dress, her words - has the right to say no, no matter how weakly, and have that be the end of it?
Forcing sex on someone who doesn't want it is wrong. Using the threat of forcing sex to get something you otherwise wouldn't get is wrong. Using the promise of sex to get something you wouldn't otherwise get is wrong. Using sex as a substitute for learning to go it alone is wrong. Using sex to fill an empty space is wrong. And sometimes just having sex is a bad idea. And sometimes you could find better things to do than have sex. Sometimes sex is more fun than the other things you could be doing. Sometimes sex makes you closer to the other person involved. Sometimes sex is how the two of you are making a baby. Sometimes sex is part of the reason why there's this blurry line between your soul and the other.
I am still bothered by my having written (much less posted) a story that uses these two elements. Because I'm not sure if I used them properly, to attain the effect I wanted to have.
I don't like stories with incest or rape for the same reason I don't like stories about people who give up - I don't want to think about that sort of thing going on. Well, one could say, ignoring it isn't going to make it go away, now is it? No, it won't. And the writer part of me says, Tell the story that needs to be told. Stories are not real life, but they need to have some of the things of real life - people, events, issues.
I think stories - fiction, fanfic, what have you - have the ability to affect the way we see things. I think that while most of us can draw a line between 'real' and 'story', I think that stories can expose us to ideas and concepts we weren't familiar with or didn't agree with before. We applaud stories that use minority characters and oppressed people and show us 'life from their eyes'. To some extent, repeated themes in literature - be they environmental awareness, rejection of oppressive status quo, the hypocrisy of those in power or the glory of military service, whatever - get absorbed into popular culture. They can even *change* popular culture. For a prime example in US history - Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Stories can have a normalizing affect - they do for me. Repeat something over and over again, in book after book, and a part of me accepts it as everyday, usual. I stop flinching. I start thinking 'everyone says that, why don't I agree?'
This is not, obviously, always a good thing.
Which is why I have trouble with some things as plot elements.
Part of the reason some people don't want slash labeled is because they want readers - especially readers who would avoid slash for 'unworthy' reasons (ie homophobia) - to become accustomed to the notion of homosexual sexual intimacy as normal. If readers read more slash, it wouldn't bother them as much. Which is (at least for me) true enough.
I see much the same thing happening with RPS - some people object to, have always objected to it, but a growing fraction of fandom doesn't see a problem with it. And as RPS is admitted to more and more lists and archives, it is those groups and people who *don't* accept RPS who stand out. And the proponents of greater RPS acceptance say, 'who does it hurt? It's just a story.'
So what happens when we read more stories that feature sex between a brother and sister? (Lord of the Rings, Firefly, Lost Boys, Harry Potter, Due South - I'm looking at all of you. And double for Harry Potter, for the Twincest. And Buffy, for the Dawn/Buffy.)
What happens when we read more stories about older men having sex with the youths under their care/control? What happens when we expand that to 'older men having sex with their own children?' (The entirety of the 'chan' sub genre of anime, Harry Potter, Buffy, Angel - both the Sire/Childe issues and the Connor entanglements - Batman...)
What happens when we read such stories placed in the POV of the youth, and we see that, in this story, the youth actually *craves* this contact, is healed by it, is strengthened by it, finds the intercourse enjoyable and a part of growning towards adulthood? So far, a very real fear of running afoul of pedophilia laws has kept this down enough that I personally haven't come across it. I do not doubt that such stories exist.
What happens when we read stories about rape - about the aftermath of rape, about the experience of rape as a healing event for the rapist? What about rape where the victim actually enjoys the experience? I can think of two stories in due South, and one in Angel. There is an archive for 'angst' fics, with a section exclusively for rape.
So what happens when we, I, as reader, start accepting these as 'everyday'?
Worse yet, for me - what if we start writing them for the purpose of sexual titillation - of using such things 'because they're hot?' Of encouraging their consumption.
I don't know about other writers, but me, my writing, my characters and my plots - they stay in my brain much longer than do the stories of other people.
So what happens?
Fuck if I know. And I'm not just being coy, even though I am avoiding giving a straight answer. I don't know.
There is a part of me that hates the idea of warnings on fics, loathes the artificial distinctions between het, slash, and gen, despises the library system that divides fiction by genre and age group instead of by novel size or author's name. This part wants to spin words into nets and snares fine as spider-webs, broad as clipper anchor-lines, and cast them out to see what readers I sieve from the sea. Write what I will, leave the reader to grown in their own mind.
This part would have been a wandering bard, ages back, moving from town to town, stealing a phrase here, a line there, telling jokes about the king and translating the same ribald story into a dozen languages.
There is another part, though, that thinks the storyteller can not be separated from the community of listeners, and that the assumption of artist as creator and the rest of humanity as consumer is a gross mischaracterization at best, and at worst a sham of pretentious elitism. The scientist part that thinks a strict recording of events - the scribe sitting by the fireside - is a thing beyond price. A part that thinks the best stories are true ones, and that while truth is not accuracy, there is much to be gained from attempting a high degree of realism. The stories I tell are about people - the characters might be a meld of faces I have never seen, but they live and breath. If I tell the story right, a listener suspends disbelief and says, that could happen, I have seen that happen. Or a listener might read of a character and say - that is me.
The same part of me that accepts my responsibility as a reader also pushes me to accept my responsibility as a writer. I can say 'it's not my fault what a person thinks about what I wrote', except that, well, yes, it is. Those words didn't come out of thin air - I connected them and put them together and used a bit of art to make them enticing. And I did so - as a reasonable adult - well able to guess what people would think of what I said. And what they would feel about it. Or what they might feel about it.
That part of me baulks at the thought of drawing a murder and saying, 'look, here, she's not so bad, can't you accept her?' Of setting a sister beside a brother and saying, 'couple, then, if it gives you comfort, and damn those who would cry foul'. Of having a man rise from between his victim's bloody thighs refreshed, invigorated, and ready to defeat the evil villain. Because sometimes a good fuck cures everything.
I hesitated to post this story because I didn't want to be part of the normalization process for any mind that had wondered, 'Am I the only one who thinks women actually want to be raped?'
Just as I would not set a knife down in front of a three-year old, just as I would not give a stranger's child a beer, I'm beginning to think that I should think twice before I put dangerous ideas into the web without a warning or a lock.
I've read more than a few rape fics, and (here lately) more than a few incest fics. Which seem to have been proliferating as of late. It was JennyO, I think, who, last year, called incest fic 'the new orange', and noted that the oddest people were posting such fics.
'My' fandom - as much as I have one - is Farscape, with the weirdest damn relationship to painful, gut crunching plot elements that I have ever seen. You name it, the show has done it. Including several varieties of rape. But that doesn't show up in fic that often.
Another of my favorite fandoms is Firefly, where incest of the severely fucked up kind trembles on the line of being canon. And then there is Lord of the Rings and 'Rohan-cest'. (I really don't like the cute names. Like Twincest or Wescest. Like I said, normalization.)
I like and appreciate and enjoy the stories that take difficult elements - family rejection, violence both sexual and not, fucked-up family relationships, non-standard romances - and build good, intriguing stories around them. I don't care for - and I wish there were fewer - stories that whitewashed over those issues, that pretend such things don't hurt, that don't share out blame in a realistic fashion, that depicted pain to satisfy kink and that try to pretend that a good fuck cures everything.
I don't want to say, I wrote this right, the way everyone else writes fics with rape or incest or grits with milk is wrong.
I don't know if I hit the right notes in Mother of Horses. I got a couple feedbacks that seemed to hint otherwise - people wanted more of the incest.
I got feedback that said, This was a hard story, this hurt. And the writing was beautiful. Which means that for some readers, I wrote the words right, so they saw what I wanted to show.