Sometime reasonable wins...

[maygra]

If you have not tripped over heatherly's essay elsewhere, I encourage you to read it.

You know, if that's the sort of thing you like to read.

I say this in full admission of fact that I disagree, or rather, approach differently a couple of points in the second half of her essay -- primarily from a ideological and practical POV as opposed to disagreeing with her en toto of a writer's responsibility. I'm pretty sure I'll have additional thoughts on that in a bit, if I can get my thoughts organized in such a way as to present them as less contention than perspective.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I didn't really understand what the point of the post was. Maybe because it was so cautiously phrased. I mean, the post said that she had no problem with erotic fantasies, but then it gave the impression as if the only "responsible" way to write certain topics was the "take them serious as RL issues and do research" approach, it seemed?

I'm not into incest fic, so I'm unsure about fictional tropes there, but the same kind of argument exists with research for rapefic. Which, sure, is a good idea if anyone wants to write fanfic about rape as trauma realistically, but not so much if the point is to write a rape fantasy played out by characters. I mean, for example, I like rapefic of the kind where essentially the rape is fetishized, as porn, but the other kind of rapefic where the rape functions mainly as trauma and is dealt more or less realistically doesn't work as porn for me even if the descriptions are explicit. If it is heavy on the hurt it can work for me for my character hurt/torture kink, but that isn't really a "porn kink" but a "plot kink" for me. Along the same lines most porn slavefic wouldn't really be improved by researching human trafficking and its psychological impact on the victims, and I really don't see why anyone should do research into that to write write their "they get kidnapped, enslaved and humiliated by the bad guys" epic, or risk to be accused to make lightof human slavery.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

It's a plot kink - exactly. When you start "taking issues seriously and doing research", you still can't forget how YOUR characters are going to react to this situation. Not how they should react or how mental health professionals think they should react, but how they - as characters in your head - will react in ways internally consistent to your already-created characterisation of them. Otherwise it might as well be an essay on a survivor website where "the names have been changed" to protect the innocent, because it's not actually exploring *that* issue in terms of *these* characters, is it?